"Inferior Blood." Under

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF

Linda Lorraine Currey for the degree of Masterof Science in the Department of General Science presented on June 17, 1977. Title: The Oregon Eugenic Movement: Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair

Abstract approved: Dr. 'Paul Farber, Department of General Science

In 1906, applying Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories to the human race, Sir Francis Galton introduced the concept of eugenics, "the science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding."The rediscovery in 1900 of Mendel's laws of genetic inheritance and an upsurge in hereditarian thought set the stage for the eugenic movement in America.That movement was organized in 1906 when the American Breeders' Association formed a committee on eugenics to study the heredity of the human race and to evaluate the threat'to society of "inferior blood."Under the leadership of respected biologists, eugenic field workers, themselves amateur social reformers, collected family pedigrees hoping to find a pattern in theinheritance of human defects.These pedigrees, carelessly and inconsistently constructed, formed the basis of "scientific" evidence used by eugenists campaigning for human sterilization legislation. Eugenic reform becamea popular movement that by 1915 had

attracted the interest andsupport of the "thinking"

members of American society. A model eugenic sterilization

law drafted by Henry Laughlinin 1914, proposed sterilization

of 10 percent of the population,including the feebleminded,

insane, criminal, epileptic,alcoholic, diseased, blind,

deaf, deformed, and dependent. By 1931, thirty states had

passed similar sterilization lawsand 12,145 sterilizations

had been performed underauspices of those laws. Eugenic sterilization legislationwas codified into the General Laws of Oregon in 1920. The leading advocate for eugenic sterili zation legislation in Oregonwas that state's first woman doctor, Bethenia AngelinaOwens-Adair. She first introduced a sterilization bill into the Oregon legislaturein 1907 and reintroduced it in each legislativesession until its successful passage in 1917. Owens-Adairts interest in eugenic reform was an outgrowth of her educationand professional experience in medicine, coupledwith her active involvement in the campaigns for women's suffrageand prohibition. Her ten-year fight to includesterilization legislation in Oregon's laws resulted in theformation of the Oregon State Board of Eugenics, later named theOregon State Board of Social Protection. During the 68 years of this board's active operation, 2,648 Oregonianswere sterilized in the name of eugenics. The Oregon Eugenic Movement: Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair by

Linda Lorraine Currey

A THESIS

submitted to

Oregon State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Science

June 1978 APPROVED:

Associate Professor of the History of Science in charge of major

Chairman Department of General Science

Date thesis is presented June 17, 1977 Dedicated with love and appreciation to my parents who always accepted my collect phone calls

August 1977 HUMAN STERILIZATION

DR. ' B. OWENSADAIR, Author ofThe Famous "HUMAN STERILIZATION" BILL of Oregon Table of Contents

I. Introduction...... 1

II. The American Eugenic Movement 1900 - 1930 . . . . 4 III. Pioneer Advocate of Eugenics in Oregon:

Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair ...... 142

IV. Owens-Adair in Relation to 19th Century Social History

A. Women's Suffrage...... 47

B. Women in Medicine...... 69

C. Temperance and Prohibition ...... 86 V. Medicine andEugenics:Owens-Adair's Oregon Eugenic

Sterilization Campaign ...... 105

VI. Conclusion...... 139

Bibliography...... 0 .. 0 0 . 0 0 . 0 . 143 I. INTRODUCTION

In 1920 a bill was codified into the General Laws of Oregon that made mandatory the sterilization of certain

classes of defectives and degenerates. Oregon was one of

thirty states to pass sterilization laws in thename of

eugenics, the "science of the improvement of the humanrace by better breeding." By 1931, under the auspices of those laws, 12,145 sterilizations were performedon the nation's feebleminded, insane, criminal, epileptic, alcoholic, diseased, blind, deaf, deformed, and dependentpersons. The nationwide American eugenics movement reached its zenith between 1900 and 1930. It was an outgrowth of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which was applied by eugenists to the human race in the name of social reform. The rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's laws of genetic inheritance in 1900 lent eugenics an air of scientific authority that would give the movement considerable force during the next three decades. The perfection of simple sterilization techniques around the turn of the century gave eugenists the means for putting their theories into practice, and in 1907 the first legislative battle was won as Indiana passed the nation's first eugenic sterilization law.

The American eugenics movement is traced in this thesis from its beginnings with Darwin's theories through its association with racist policies to its ultimate decline 2 during the Nazi regime in Germany. In particular, the

eugenic movement in Oregon is discussed and related to the larger national campaign for eugenic sterilization.

The eugenic movement in Oregon was championed by a woman named Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair. In addition to being an outspoken advocate of sterilization legislation,

Owens-Adair is remembered as a vocal advocate of women?s

suffrage, temperance, and prohibition. She also holds the distinction of being one of the first pioneers to settle in Oregon, and was the first woman doctor in that state.

In 1907, after her retirement from active medical practice, Owens-Adair authored a eugenic sterilization bill, which she introduced into the Oregon legislature. It failed to pass that year, but with undaunted enthusiasm Owens-Adair reintroduced her bill in each successive legislative session until its passage in 1917. As part of her campaign for public acceptance of eugenics, Owens-Adair gave numerous public speeches and lecturesand wrote innumerable articles for the general press. Owens-Adair's uncritical acceptance of eugenic ideals and promotion of human sterilizationas aneffective method of social reform reflects the mood of the nationwide

eugenic movement. Eugenics, originally devised asa science, became a reform movement backed not by scientists by by

social activists. Owens-Adair fits the characterization 3 of that era's typical eugenist--only peripherally acquainted with the principles of heredity but willing to use the science of genetics as supposed justification for the planned manipulation of the human race. II. THE AMERICAN EUGENIC MOVEMENT 1900-1930

Modern American eugenics, or "the science of the

improvement of better breeding," began on another continent with the work of an Englishman named Sir Francis Galton

(1822-1911).1 From a family of influentialscientists and businessmen, Galton was trained in medicine and mathematics. When left financially independent through an inheritance at age 22, Galton was free to pursue his interestsin travel and statistics.He was soon elected to the Royal Society and became actively involved in most of Britain's scientific societies. It was Galton's cousin, Charles Darwin(1809-1882), who provided the theories on which Galton would basehis future research.In On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,2 published in 1859, Darwin explained evolution as a struggle for existence betweenmembers of a species that were variously endowed with variabletraits. As individuals won or lost the struggle for survival,the variations they carried were perpetuated or lostfrom the population and evolution proceeded. Ironically, Darwin was reluctant to applyhis evolutionary theory to mankind.In Origin of Species, Darwin avoided discussion of thesubject, fearing that such a focus would detract from themajor emphasis of his work. In an 1857 letter to Russell Wallace,Darwin wrote: 5

"You ask whether I shall discuss 'man' . . . I think I shall avoid the whole subject, as so surrounded with prejudices; though I fully admit that it is the highestand most interesting problem for thenaturalist."3 Indeed, a simple statement in Origin ofSpecies was

Darwin's only reference to the problem: "In thedistant future I see open fields for far moreimportant researches. Light will be thrown on the origin of manand hishistory.4

Less cautious than his cousin, Galtonembarked on the research Darwin avoided and drew a directconnection between evolution andman.5Galton set out to show howheredity and variation worked in humans through aseries of broad

statistical studies. His first work was a compilation ofthe pedigrees of famous men, published in1869 in HereditaryGenius.6 Galton, no doubt proud of his ownimpressive pedigree,

argued that mental ability--outstandingability in this

case--is inherited. This premise accepted, itfollowed that heredity rather thanenvironment was the important

factor in man's development. Galton went on to define the basics of eugenic doctrine:iraankind is shaped by heredity and by controlling thatheredity, the future of

the species can be molded.

In addition to showing that mental ability was

inherited, Hereditary Geniusincluded some practical

suggestions for increasing the"natural ability" of the 6

human race. Galton wrote that humanbreeding and marriage

patterns should becontrolled to encourage the fitto marry

and reproduce early;the weak and unfit to doso later in life.

At the time his bookwas published, Galton's reviewers felt he had over stressedthe role of heredity in determining

character, and hadnot considered fully the roles of family influence and socialclass. The reviewers generally did not accept Galton's proposalthat an individual's intellectual capacity could be gauged byhis accomplishments.7

In 1871, Darwin himself discussedthe effect of natural selection on human society inThe Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex.8Darwin believed that natural selection did act on modern civilization,though not to the extent that Galton suggested. Instead, Darwin said the direction of civilization was mainly guidedby social and cultural influences not affected bynatural selection. Darwin agreed with Galton that civilizationhas done much to eliminate the factors of naturalselection:

With savages, the weak in bodyor mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonlyexhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check theprocess of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick;we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill tosave

the life of every one to the last moment. . . . Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt thathis must be highly injurious to therace of man. 7 However, Darwin was careful to point out that civilization

does not, as Galton believed, completely eliminatenatural selection: "Although civilisation thus checks inmany ways the action of natural selection, it apparently favours the

better development of the body, by means of good foodand the freedom from occasional hardships. This may be inferred from civilised men having been found, wherever compared, to be physically stronger than savages."10

Darwin's documentation was generally overlooked,as was his discussion of the relationship between society and natural selection. Instead, attention focused on Darwin's major themes in Descent of Man, which dealt with the roles

of natural and sexual selection in human evolution. The possibility that man descended through natural selection from an ape-like ancestor rather than having been created by a supreme deity became a much-debated issue among the scientific community.11

Darwin's theory of natural selection was vigorously attacked during the 1870s. As a result, Darwin increasigly emphasized the inheritance of acquired characteristics as a mechanism of evolution.

The Neo-Lamarckians, whose views were most popular from 1870 to 1890, believed that the environment could cause biological adaptations in an organism, and that those changes would be inherited by its offspring. In other words, they 12 claimed that acquired characteristics were inherited* 8

Galton's writings, however, continued to be anti:-Lamarckian as he rejected the widely held belief in the inheritance of

acquired characteristics. The Neo-Lamarckian view of eugenic thought implied that heredity could be partially controlled

by the environment.13 If this were true, a planned program

of regulated breeding would be largelyunnecessary because social reform could improve the heredity of future generations. Galton was one of the few who repudiated the idea that social

reform could alter the inherited character of futuregenerations.l

Galton used the word "eugenics" for the first time in

Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development, published in 1886. As he used the term, eugenics meant the "science of improving stock," and to that end, encompassed selective marriage and "all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had."15 During the 1880s, Galton studied family pedigrees to determine the statistical relationships in hereditary patterns. In Natural Inheritance, published in 1889, Galton used distribution curves and correlation coefficients to explain individuals' inheritancepatterns.16 By this time other scientists were beginning to reject the Lamarckian school of thought and accept the hereditarian 9

theories Galton had embraced earlier. The change came when August Weismann (1834-1914), a German biologist, developed his germ-plasm theory and caused an upsurge of Neo-Darwinian

thought. Weismann seemed to invalidate the claim that ac-

quired characteristics were inherited. Weissman cut off the tails of adult mice, which thus "acquired" a tailess

characteristic. Nonetheless, the offspring of the tailess mice inherited normal tails.17

Weismann proposed a different theory of inheritance.

He said that the reproductive germ plasm remained "immortal" through succeeding generations and held determiners for

each somatic trait. By 1895, Weismannts theory had convinced a large number of biologists, causing the Neo-Darwinian school to replace the Neo-Lamarckians in prominence.18 Since Weismannts theory could be easily interpreted as extremely hereditarian, when it gained prominence most scientists felt justified in thinking heredity more important than environment. Weismann had said that all traits that were biologically inherited were inherited through the germ plasm at conception. Weismannts followers interpreted his statements as implying that all human traits were biologicallyinherited.19The adoption of this belief set the stage for a hereditarian program of eugenics. Two other events lent support to a hereditarian view- point. The rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's (1822-1844) laws of heredity in 1900 lent the movement further support and 10 started the modern science of genetics, upon which most of the eugenic doctrine that followed would claim to be based. Biologists began to link the theories of Mendel and Weismann with the mutation theory of Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries

(1848-1935). That theory stated that evolution occured through the mutation of the total genetic compliment of a species. Taken together, the three theories showed that evolution and variation occured through biological rather than environmental causes and thus nature was more important than nurture.20 As Lamarckism decreased in popularity, the eugenists who were not satisfied with social reform had a basis on which to attack it. The implications of the new theories of heredity were made clear--if bad heredity could not be improved through social reform, then consideration must be given to the way in which different segments of society 21 reproduce. The British eugenics movement provided the stimulus for the movement in America:and the scientific doctrine upon which it was based. Galton's studies showing that intellectual ability is :inherited, and the studies of his disciple, Karl Pearson (1857-1936), showing that moral and intellectual characteristics are inherited in the same way as physical traits, formed a soundbasis for the belief that better breeding will improve man's mind andbody.22

Galton and Pearson were leaders of-.the"biometrical" 11

approach to the study of heredity. That approach dominated genetic research in England from 1900-1915. The researchers

did not follow the Mendelian theory that heredity was determined by genes inherited in predictable ratios. Instead of working with "discontinuous traits" (traits that appear in one form or another) the biometricians worked with

"quantitative or "metrical" characteristics. They believed that metrical traits, including human intelligence, are manifested in any of a number of ways that vary along a

continuous scale. Rather than investigate the heredity of individuals, they studied patterns in large populations and developed statistical methods to carry out their work. Those methods have since been widely used in population biology.

In contrast, hereditary research carried out in America after 1900 was largely Mendelian. During this early period the science of genetics was closely tied with eugenics through the researchers and institutions associated with both fields. As a result, research in human genetics became equated witheugenics.23 As interest increased in Mendelian genetics at the turn of the century, research turned to the study of pedigrees and breeding experiments in plants and animals. This interest and the formation of the American Breeders' Association in 1903 led to the organization of the American eugenics movement. At its second meeting in January 1906, the association formed a committee on eugenics to study the heredity of the human 12 race and to evaluate the threat to society of "inferior blood." The members of the committee became the driving forces behind the American eugenics movement; the most influential among them was Charles Davenport(1866-196;4.).24

While a professor at Harvard University, Davenport became interested in the statistical studies of Galton and

Pearson.25Davenport also quickly embraced the theories of Mendel and de Vries and by 1904 felt that livingorganisms were simply combinations of biologically inheritedtraits and that the characteristics of the adult form could be found in the fertilizedegg.26 His hereditarian views proved influential in the eugenics movement. In 1902, Davenport was appointed director of the Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. Here he conducted work in experimental genetics and later in eugenics. In 1909 Davenport became secretary of the American Breeders Association'sCommittee of Eugenics where he organized committees toexpand the study of human heredity. As a well-respected biologist, Davenport'sleadership of the Committee of Eugenics lent considerableimportance to its investigations. Under Davenport's guidance, ten research subcommittees were formed to encourageuniversity and institutional research on the hereditarycause of feeblemindedness, insanity, epilepsy, criminality,deafness, and eyedefects.27 13

The Committee of Eugenics, and theEugenics Record

Office at Cold Spring Harbor, alsounder Davenport's direction, became the two most importantAmerican organizations for human genetics research. Davenport's goal was to turn ColdSpring Harbor into a national center for eugenics. He convinced philanthropist Mrs. Edward Henry Harriman that money spent-oneugenics would be much more effective than moneyspent on charity, and in 1910 she bought 80 acres nearCold Spring Harbor.

Later that year the EugenicsRecord Office began operation there under Davenport'sdirection, and it rapidlybecame a center for theAmerican eugenics movement. The eugenics field workers trained theremade surveys andcollected extensive family histories fromdefective people and resi dents of asylums, prisons,and institutions. Davenport's studies and thoseof the eugenics workers he directed were based onthe scientific theoryof genetics of Mendel and de Vries, he had adopted. Linking the theories Davenport believed that unitcharacters arose bysudden mutation, were indivisible,and were inheritedindependently. in Consequently, Davenport sawenvironment as unimportant

the evolution of livingorganisms. This was the heredi-

tarian position he appliedto man in his eugenicswork.28 Davenport's uncriticalapplication of Mendelian genetics to man typified theaction of biologistsin the Davenport and other first twenty years ofthis century. 14 scientists believed that every physical characteristic, every facet of personality and all the intracaciesof mental capacity were inherited according to simple Mendelianratios.29

Davenport and other eugenists during the century'sfirst decade considered investigations in human heredity tobe the leading branch of eugenic research. By investigating human pedigrees they hoped to find the law of hereditythat determined each humantrait.30 As a respected biologist and member of theNational

Academy of Sciences, and as the acknowledgedleader of American eugenics, Davenport was in a powerfulposition to mold the future of the movement. He had the potential to insure quality in eugenic researchand confine the ensuing eugenic legislation within theboundaries of what was then known about humanheredity. However, under his direction amateur eugenics field workerspre-empted professionals in collecting pedigree studies,devised more for eugenic application than for the pursuit ofknowledge.

These studies were eventually accepted asthe scientific basis for eugenic breeding programs. The work conducted under the auspices ofthe Eugenics

Record Office was often careless andinconsistent. Daven- port insured biased studies by instructingfield workers to search for patterns of inheritancethat fit Mendelian ratios, thereby emphasizing genetic influencesand eliminating environmental factors. Davenportts own investigations 15

after 1906 into human heredity contained the same, uncritical

Mendelian predispositions. He remained convinced that all human traits followed Mendel's laws of inheritance, a view

he held until his death in 1944. And though Davenport stressedthe importance of investigation into the workings of human heredity, he supported legislation that was not

supported by scientific knowledge, such as eugenic sterili-

zation laws and the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924. Although subsequent investigation has shown that more traits follow Mendelian patterns in man than in any otherorganism, early studies did not support the extreme hereditarian,views of Davenport and hisfollowers.31 Davenport's studies strengthened a belief widely held in the 19th century, that mental disease was symptomatic of an inherited weakness. In Davenport'swork, a wide range of mental illness, along with a variety of personality oddities, were attributed to the actionof a single gene. Davenport's methods of collecting family pedigrees and recording the simplepresence or absenceof traits, and his* apparent attempt to mold the results into Mendelian ratios were subject to criticism by the scientific community. But Davenport's faith that intelligence, personality, and moralitywere determinedby hereditywas abelief that was widelyshared.So was thehopethat eugenicscould shape a better world by eliminatingdefective genes. 16

The center for the study of these defectivegenes and their manifestation in the feebleminded was the Vineland

Training School for the Feebleminded, located in New Jersey.

Its director was psychologist Henry H. Goddard (1866-1957). Goddard and his field workers tested for the Mendelian inheritance of feeblemindedness and in 1914 claimed that it was a simple recessivetrait.32Goddard also found a direct correlation between crime and feeblemindedness in a study of juvenile delinquents. But perhaps most influential wereGoddard's family history studies of the feebleminded children at Vineland. The most famous of these studies was of the family of

Deborah Kallikak, a feebleminded girl who have lived at

Vineland Training School since the age of eight. Goddard wrote that the Kallikak study was part of a campaign to evaluate the mental condition of the children who lived in the Institution, with a view to determining the mental and physical peculiarities of the different grades and types, to getting an accurate record of what deficiencies each child had and whathe was capable of doing, with the hope that in time theserecords could be correlated with the nervous system of the child, if he should die while in the Institu- tion and an autopsy be allowed.33 The Kallikak family was of particularinterest, since it provided "a natural experiment of remarkable value to the sociologist and student ofheredity."34 Twoseparate lines of the Kallikak familyweretraced. Both lines originated with one man, Martin Kallikak, but oneline 17

was generated by a feebleminded woman, the other bya "woman of quality." Predictably enough, the eugenics field workers found the first line included feebleminded and

sexually immoral persons, alcoholics, criminals, and several

people born out of wedlock. The second line, descendants of the woman from a good family, included well-respected doctors, lawyers, and judges.

As Goddard described the lesson to be learned from the Kallikaks:

we have here a family of good English blood of the middle class, settling upon the original land purchased from the proprietors of the state in Colonial times, and throughout four generations maintaining a reputation for honor and respectability of which they are justly proud. Then a scion of this family, in an unguarded moment, steps aside from the paths of rectitude and with the help of a feeble-minded girl, starts a line of mental defectives that is truly appalling. After this mistake, he returns to the traditions of his family, marries a woman of his own quality, and through her carries on a line o55respectability equal to that of his ancestors.

Goddard believed the perpetuation of defective heredity to be both dangerous and futile.

The Kallikak study was published in 1913 for popular reading and contained vivid and convincing descriptions of the squalor and poverty in which the feebleminded subjects of the study lived. The report was filled with subjective judgements and moralizing, and lacked any kind of scientific accuracy. Although the entire study dealt with feeblemindedness, the term itselfwas neverdefined. 18

Goddard did invoke a note of caution into hisstudy, but assured his readers that the methods used were adequate to insure correct identification of the feebleminded. He wrote, "if the reader is inclined to the view that we must have called a great many people feeble-minded who werenot so, let him be assured that this is notthe case. On the contrary, we have preferred to err on the other side,and we have not marked people feeble-mindedunless the case was such that we could substantiateit beyond reasonable doubt.,,36 Evidently his methods were persuasive, forGoddard's study was taken as proof that heredity alone wasresponsible for feeblemindedness, and thatenvrionmental reform could not correct the mistakes ofheredity.37 Goddard concluded that "feeble-mindednessis hereditary and transmitted as surely as any othercharacter. We cannot successfully cope with these conditionsuntil we recognize feeble-mindedness and its hereditary nature,recognize it early, and take care ofit.38 Goddard suggested segregation through colonization and sterilization aspossible courses of action to stop the proliferation offeebleminded persons like the Kallikaks. The image of the feebleminded as athreatening force was powerful enough to elicitwidespread legislation for

their control. The social reformers and members of the public who supported such legislationbelieved it was 19 scientifically justified by the investigations of respected biologists and eugenists. Accordingly, the popularized eugenics movement became a type of scientific reform.39 However, the fatalistic doctrines of Goddard and Daven- port, who said that since heredity caused poverty and criminality environmental reform was useless, drew criticism from scientific circles.

As faults were found with the Binet IntelligenceTests,40 widely used to ferret out the feebleminded; as attitudes toward criminality expanded to include environmental as well as hereditarian causes; and as the character and abilities of feebleminded persons in institutions were more fairly evaluated, the alarmist attitude about the feebleminded ended.41

By 1920, criticisms were levelled at earlier attitudes toward and studies of the feebleminded. The critics pointed out that eugenics field workers often presupposed a family was feebleminded, then used that assumption in recording family traits. One critic wryly commented that traditional medical education was really unnecessary since eugenics field workers needed only to listen to a few lectures on feeblemindedness before making surgical, medical, and psychiatric evaluations based on a conversation or a courtrecord.42

Critics stressed that many common forms of mental disease were environmentally caused, and that the simple 20

Mendelian inheritance of mental disease had not been proven.

To that end, environmental reforms were recommended in order to improve living conditions, end malnutrition, and fight

disease.

In the 1920s the new attitude toward the feebleminded brought a more rational program for their care. It included

research into the physiological causes of feeblemindedness,

early diagnosis in public schools, more education in care

of the feebleminded, and preparation of certain institutional

inmates for a productive life on the outside. But this enlightened attitude toward the feebleminded was confined to technical journals and could not offset the

popular belief in the menace of the feebleminded. Goddard+s

studies, even though he had by this time abandoned the hereditarian views they contained, continued to be the most widely used source of information on the feebleminded. Through the 1920s campaigners nationwide continued to seek

institutionalized care for the feebleminded and to pass

sterilization laws. The view prevailed that many Americans were of low intelligence and that these undesirables, including vagabonds, the poor, the unskilled, Negroes, and immigrants, were breeding into and degrading the few

families still possessing a goodheredity.43 The campaigns for custodial care and sterilization

of the feebleminded and restricted marriage of defectives were vigorously supported by some eugenists. Others 21 decried these schemes on the basis that scientific knowledge, public opinion, and common sense did not justify their implementation. As appeals were made to the voters to pass legislation, the public became familiar with eugenic reform goals. The support the public gave to eugenic legislation was reinforced by the support given by experts from charitable organizations, state institutions, and universities who were up-to-date in their studies of psychiatry, criminology, and the feebleminded. By 1915 the American public was familiar with the concept of eugenics. It represented a social movement that was discussed in the press, presented at public lectures, argued at club meetings and studied at universities. It attracted the interest and support of the "thinking" members of society, including doctors, professors, social reformers, and the clergy. But between 1914 and 1924, while eugenics was gaining widespread popularity, it lost the support of geneticists, the scientists who had first given eugenics its scientific credibility. Developments within the science of genetics proved to geneticists that the assumptions on which eugenics was based could not hold up under scientific test. By 1909 investigations into the heredity of plants showed that variations could be linked to the environment.

The ideas of "genotype" (the organism+s geneticmakeup) and "phenotype" (traits produced by genes interacting with the 22

environment) were introduced. The experiments suggested that genes could be quite sensitive to the environment in which

they were expressed, indicating that development is determined both by heredity and environment.

The Hardy-Weinburg law, formulated in 1908, showed that gene equilibrium in human populations could be mathematically predicted. The implications were great. It became clear that elimination of a gene or trait from a population is a very complex and time-consuming proposition. This contra- dicted the eugenists' declaration that control of a certain trait was easily achievable through selective breeding.

By 1913, American geneticists had shown experimentally that most traits are not determined by single genes. As traits determined by multiple genes were discovered in man, it was clear that Mendelian inheritance patterns applied to relatively few human characteristics. This too ran contrary to eugenists' claims that all human characters followed simple Mendelian patterns.

As geneticists became aware of these developments, their enthusiasm for eugenics declined--not because they disagreed with the goals of eugenics but because they believed the implementation of the science was not scientifically justifiable or feasible.44 Believing the eugenic ideal was still valid, the geneticists did not communicate their disillusionment to the general public, saving their critiques for the technical press. 23

So, although many geneticists no longer believed eugenic reform possible, eugenists and the public did not share that sentiment. Davenport continued to be enthusiastic about eugenics. He and other eugenists did not realize the implications of the multiple gene theory, the interaction of environment with heredity, and population studies. As the eugenic movement became less allied with science, it became more closely tied to politics and the battle for eugenic legislation. In 1914 the national Committee on Provisionfor the Feebleminded was established and included'amongits members superintendents of institutions for the feebleminded, rep- resentatives of state charity boards, a memberof the

National Committee on Mental Hygiene andseveral prominent

eugenists including Charles Davenport, HenryGoddard, and David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) Together they led a eugenic campaignin conjunction

with local civic and charitable groups. Their goals were

to set up state commissions to investigatelocal feebleminded residents, and to educate thepublic in the work of

the Committee of Provision. The Committee perpetuated the idea of the menace of the feeblemindedand at the same time urged the public to put the feeblemindedin institutions where they would be safe from therigors of the

outside world. 24

From 1910 to 1920 the campaign for institutional care of the feebleminded reached almost every state. As a result, the number of institutions caring for the feebleminded tripled. And care for the feebleminded outside institutions grew rapidly as medical clinics, publiceducation, and institutional parole of the feebleminded became areality.45

The issue of sterilization of the feebleminded wasmuch more open to debate than was the issueof their custodial care, which elicited none of the moral.and legal objections that accompanied sterilization legislation. As the American eugenics movement became associated withsterilization of the feebleminded, the sterilization issuebecame an effective target of the opponents of eugenics. The critics of sterilization (and many of the supporters ofsterilization) agreed that the laws were not scientificallysupported. Since they were aimed at people ininstitutions, the laws were a form of class legislation, and, in addition,the laws were often cruel, and punitive in nature. Many laws were carelessly drawn and were not vigorously enforced. Sterilization legislation was not supported by eitherthe Committee on Provision for the Feebleminded or theNational Committee

for Mental Hygiene.

Some convincing argumentsagainst sterilization were

made by leading eugenists. One was that as sterilization removed the risk of pregnancy,fornication and the spread

of venerealdiseasewould increase. Many objected to 25

sterilization on moral grounds, believing that no one should have the right or power to force sterilizationon anyone else. The Catholic Church proved to be a substantial force against the enactment of sterilization laws, saying that

sterilization and birth control were sins against nature because they interfered with reproduction. Finally, scientific arguments against sterilization pointed out that sterilization could not reduce the incidence of a recessive gene. This was particularly important since Davenport and his followers, believed that mental defects were recessive traits.46

Arguing the other side, supporters of sterilization stressed its eugenic benefits, saying sterilization would stop reproduction of all types of feebleminded and degenerate persons. They also claimed that sterilization would prevent the unfit from facing the responsibilities of parenthood; it would be fitting punishment for sex offenders; and it would have therapeutic value for habitual criminals.

The movement to pass sterilization legislation was. led by Henry H. Laughlin, assistant director of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor. Laughlin conducted studies through his "Committee to Study and Report on the Best Practical Means of Cutting off the

Defective Germ-Plasm in the American Population," which was a branch of the American Breeders' Association. 26

The Committee took the view that germ-plasm was public property, belonging to society as a whole rather than to the individual. The Committee recommended segregation and sterilization of the 10 percent of the population they called defective, and promised that such a program, along with mass education in the principles of heredity, would rid the country of its undesirable germ-plasm within twogenerations.47 Laughlin urged sterilization of those who might produce socially inadequate offspring. Candidates for sterilization included the feebleminded, insane, criminal, epileptic, alcoholic, diseased, blind, deaf, deformed, and dependent. In his model sterilization law, Laughlin recommended that the socially unfit be considered for sterilization whether in an institution or not; thus the law would not be criticized as class legislation. To assure due process of law, Laughlin suggested that the state's chief eugenist make a study of the heredity of the candidate for sterilization before obtaining a court order for theaction.48 The nation's first sterilization law was passedin

1907 in Indiana and in the next ten years15 other states passed similar laws. They were California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, NewJersey,

New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Oregon,South Dakota,

Washington, and Wisconsin. 27

By the end of World War I, several of the sterilization laws had been declared unconstitutional, and in other states the laws were not well enforced. During the 1920s, most of the states with sterilization laws added amendments or passed new laws to meet constitutional requirements. The revised laws required that sterilization not be invoked as a punitive measure, that it not be used as class legislation against institutionalized people, and that due process of law be guaranteed. During that decade, fourteen more states passed their first sterilization laws:, Alabama, Arizona,

Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and

West Virginia. The laws in these states were written with more attention to-prevailing sentiment in the courts. More than the first group of sterilization laws, the second set of laws provided for due process through notice, counsel at court hearings, and appeal procedures. They did not specifically call for sterilization of perverts and rapists and thus were not punitive, and they applied equally to all defectives and thus were not considered class legislation.49 Thirty states had passed sterilization laws by 1931 and in 27 states the laws were still operative, though not always strictly enforced. In the 24 years afterpassage of the first sterilization law 12,145 sterilizations were 28 performed in America under the auspices of these laws.

Twice as many sterilizations were performed on the insane than on the feebleminded, and few sterilizations were performed on epileptics and criminals. By 1958, the number of sterilizations performed for eugenic reasons reached 60,296 and by that time, more feebleminded than insane persons had been sterilized. The majority werewomen.50 The sentiment behind the sterilization laws can be traced to the late nineteenth century when social reformers and medical professionals were interested in helping society's unfortunates. As hereditarian theories became prevalent, the professional reformers, including physicians, psychiatrists, criminologists, social workers and prison and hospital officials, began to believe that environmental reforms could not solve the problem. Eugenic sterilization was proposedas a means to improve the bad heredity that caused feeblemindedness,

criminality, and dereliction. The first legislative campaign for sterilization was waged in the 1890s. In 1897 a sterilization bill was introduced into the Michigan state legislature and defeated.

During that decade, administrators at the Kansas State

Institution for Feebleminded Children sterilized fourteen boys and fourteen girls without legal backing before public

outcry forced an end to that program. In the late nineteenth century public opinion opposed sterilization for twomajor

reasons. First, the widely-held belief in the inheritance 29 of acquired characteristics indicated that sterilization was unnecessary as a eugenic measure. Second, the only known method of sterilization, castration,seemed to be a crude type of mutilation that caused unintended behavioral changes in the subject. After 1900, these objections to sterilization were overturned. Criminal anthropology had become a popular field, and by suggesting that physical and mental defects were hereditary in origin, anthropologists indicated that the eradication of unhealthy germ plasmwas necessary. The hope that environmental reform would cure society's ills was diminished as credence in Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics decreased. The popularization ofMendel's laws ofinheritance provided supporters of sterilization with a biological explanation and justification for their proposals. Perhaps most important in gaining public support of sterilization programs was the development of two safe and simple sterilization operations. Theseprocedures, vasectomy for men (cutting and tying thevasdeferens) and salpingectomy for women(cutting and tying the fallopian tubes), did not disturb the body's hormonal balance orappear to cause the latent effectscommonwithcastration.51 These combinedforces were strong enough for eugenists to win legislative battles. The nation's first sterilization 30 law, passed in Indiana in 1907, set the tenor for other legislation that followed. It made compulsory the sterilization of all the state's institutional inmates who were insane, idiotic, imbecilic, feebleminded, or who were convicted rapists and criminals, when recommended by a board of experts. Subsequent laws in other states broadened the range of hereditary defectives who were candidates for sterilization to include sexual perverts, drug fiends, drunkards, epileptics, and diseased and degeneratepersons.52

While Henry Laughlin aroused public support for sterilization laws, claiming the scientific validity of eugenic sterilization, most of the nation's geneticists turned against such legislation. They believed the laws were premature and that in-depth study of human heredity should precede legislation. However, despite their concern, geneticists did not actively work against the passage of sterilization laws. Some geneticists supported sterilization in selected cases, especiallyas a meansto eradicate feeblemindedness, considered to be a Mendelian recessive trait as late as the 1920s. Interestingly, many eugenists agreed with geneticists that sterilization laws were not justified by the currentscience of heredity. There was also a feeling that sterilization laws were being passed through the leadership and efforts of a few individuals and that public support was not great enough to demand strict enforcement. That, in fact, turned out to be the case. With the exception of California, 31 most states did not enforce theirsterilization laws to the full extent possible. The sterilization laws, though designedfor eugenic reasons, were actually usedin most cases as social tools. Few efforts were made to trace thegenetic pedigrees of those being sterilized, and sterilizations were notperformed

solely on people with known hereditarydefects. Instead, sterilizations were performed mainly onsocial problem

groups: people who wereimpoverished or dependent oncharity,

and those with loose sexualstandards or having illegitimate children. Institutions for thefeebleminded sterilized inmates

before releasing them to precludethe possibility of preg-

nancy and the burdensof parenthood. Such programs were carried out not so much foreugenic purposes but to improve

the chances of survival ofthe feebleminded andinsane after

their release frominstitutions.53 Despite the questionableeugenic effect of thenation's sterilization laws, theirconstitutional validity wasdeter-

mined in 1927. In that year the U.S. SupremeCourt upheld enthusiasm the Virginia sterilizationlaw and brought renewed to the sterilization campaign. In the decision ofthat

case, Buck vs. Bell,Supreme Court JusticeOliver Wendell

Holmes wrote thatsterilization is one of thepolice powers of the state, and that theworld would benefit ifsociety

prevented the unfit frompropagating. In a now-famous of imbeciles passage, Holmesdeclared: "Three generations 32 areenough."54

After World War I. the eugenics movement and campaigns for sterilization legislation began to moveaway from questions of heredity and move toward questions of race and the immigration of various races into this country. The issue of immigration restriction, like sterilization legislation,was an area where genetic and other biological factors were important and eugenists very influential.55

As the war ended, the American public began to voice a fear of the consequences of unlimited immigration. Concern for immigration patterns dated to the post Civil War period, when immigrants from non-Anglo-Saxon countries of southern and eastern Europe began to arrive in this country in addition to the traditional immigrants from northwestEurope.As more attention was focused on differences within the white race, the Anglo Saxon typecame to beregarded as superior. Along with feelings of Anglo Saxon superiority, many Americans developed a genuine fear of and hostility toward immigrants. Anglo Saxon Americans who consideredthemselves "natives" worried that ethnic minorities might displace them, both in numbers and in power. From 1870on, demands were madefor the restriction of immigration, and, finally, the Immigration RestrictionLeague wasformed. The notion of Nordic superioritywas promoted and popularized in the 1920s by the Eugenics Committee of the United States of America, which became the most powerful 33

Congressional lobby for restriction. Nordic stock, considered to be the native American type, was an amalgamation of the

English, Dutch, and Scotch-Irish settlers who had first set the character of the nation. The Emergency Act of 1921 was passed as a temporary measure to keep immigration into the United States from

European countries at three percent of each nation's natives living in America during the census of 1910. This act was passed primarily for economic reasons, to stop theinflux of Europeans into an already overcrowded labor market.

By 1924, however, racial arguments became mostimportant in the consideration of immigration restriction. Supporters of restriction argued that the Nordic type would bereplaced by the biologically inferior, "new" immigrants fromsouthern and eastern Europe. The permanent Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 limited annual immigration from each European nation to two percent of that country's nativesliving in the United States during the 1890 census. This legislation effectively reduced the proportion of immigrants from

southern and eastern European nations. In the first two decades of this century, much was written about the restriction of immigration as abiological

imperative. One of the most influential works was The Passing of the Great Race,written in 1916 by

MadisonGrant.56In his book Grant characterized the

European immigrants as members of inferior races,threatening 34 to eliminate the genetically pure "Nordic race" that had founded thenation. After World WarI,when Grant's work gained the attention of Congress and the public, it greatly furthered the cause of racialpropagandists.57 Grant and other eugenists promoted immigration restriction as a form of Social Darwinism, claiming that an individual's hereditary makeup was accurately measured by his economic and social status.The poor quality of the immigrants' heredity could be measured, they said, by the disease, illiteracy, poverty, and crime found in immigrant neighbor- hoods.

Grant's doctrines of Nordic superiority won scientific approval and generated a great deal of public interest. As popularized in the press and presented at legislative hearings,Grant's racistideas became an important part of Americanthought.58 Two genetic argumentsweremade by eugenists promoting restriction. First, they claimed that since heredity out- weighed environmental factors, the immigrants' undesirable characteristics could not be improved. Second,they stressed that crossing a Nordic individual with an immigrant would be a "disharmonious crossing," sure to result in offspring inferior to both parental strains.

This idea was based on the results of agricultural experiments that showed "reversions" to wild type in some crossings of domestic strains. Eugenists used these 35 experiments to argue that closely related races, like the

Nordic strains, could safely interbreed. Crossing dissimilar strains, they said, would result in offspring that reverted to the lowest type. To protect the quality of the native stock and maintain racial homogeneity, eugenists promoted selective immigration restriction, which they won in 1924.

In 1920, Henry Laughlin was appointed as the expert on eugenics of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization.

For nearly a decade, Laughlin testified before the committee about the threat of inferior races, and supported his claims with a large amount of statistical data. Laughlinfs reports that biologically inferior immigrants threatened to destroy American stock were criticized before a Congressional panel by Herbert Jennings, ahighly respected geneticist. Laughlin disregarded the criticisms and for a while his eugenic arguments for immigration restriction were received by legislators and the public as unbiased and scientifically accurate.His writings and those of other eugenists were widely played in the popular press until public demand for a"biological" restriction law reached azenith.59 Laughlin's testimonials also impressed the chairman of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization,

Albert Johnson. Johnson had already-shown a- powerful predjudice against foreigners, and Laughlin's

data convinced Johnson that his hatred wasjustified by 36 science. In 1923,Johnson was elected president of the Eugenics Research Association,6o When Johnson's immigration bill was passed into law in 1924, Congressmen believed they were following a dictate of science.The genetic arguments used by eugenists implied a scientific sanction of immigrationrestriction that was difficult to oppose.The predjudice and fear that had built up against foreigners during World WarI could now be scientifically justified by restrictionists. The regret that many geneticists felt later came toolate.61 More regrettable than this American misuseofgenetics and eugenic ideals was the perversion ofthese sciences in

Germany. The eugenics movement in Germany beganat the turn of the century and, as in America, wascharacterized both by legitimate and biased research. When Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) came into power,eugenics became an important part of the Nazi regime.Hitler had been a long-time advocate of race bettermentthrough eugenics and his goal of national regeneration depended onthe application of "biological principles" tosociety. His Eugenic Sterilization Law was enacted on July14, 1933 to

stop the flow of "less worthy" genes. Unlike other countries

that passed sterilization legislation,Germany's law was carried out on a huge scale. More than250,000 people were sterilized under this law, which led toHitler's euthanasia

law, enacted in 1939. Under the euthanasia law 50,000 37 people were killed within two years--a sort of small-scale

test after which millions of other "undesirables" were murdered. One historian of eugenics wrote, "It is a tragedy of Galton's heritage that the man who took his ideas most

seriously should pervert the concepts of genetics.,62 Though most American geneticists disapproved the Nazi race doctrines from the start, many of the eugenists did not distinguish Nazi ideology from the goals of eugenics. Many

American eugenists openly praised the German Sterilization

Law, not realizing the political motives behind it. The racist doctrines promoted by Americaneugenists were those that gained the widest support among the American people.

In the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 eugenists found their greatest triumph. This campaign was considerably more effective than eugenistst efforts to obtain hygenic marriage laws and sterilization legislation. However, the greatest success of eugenicswas also its downfall. The link between eugenics and extremeracism was the factor that brought its public repudiation. When racism could no longer be scientifically justified, and when Hitlerts Nazis demonstrated the force of race predjudice in the name of eugenics, the American public turned against eugenics and the hereditarian attitudes it emphasized. After Hitler's shocking application of eugenic ideas, the American public 63 was readyto forget altogether the meaning of the wordeugenics* 38

Chapter II References 1For biographical materialon Francis Galton see the work of fellow biometrician, Karl Pearson: The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914). 2Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (England: John Murray, 1859; reprint ed., Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1974)

30riginof Species, cited by John C. Greene, The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact-on Western Thought (Ames: The Iowa State University Press, 1959), P-309.

41bid.

SMarkH. Haller, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), p.9. 6FrancisGalton, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1908). 7Lyndsay Farrall, The origins and Growth of the English Eugenics Movement 1865-1970 (Ann Arbor, Mich., University Microfilms, Inc., 1970).

8CharlesDarwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1917 .

91bid..,p.136

l°Ibid.,p.138 11Farrall,EnglishEugenics Movement, p.11 12HamiltonCravens, American Scientists and the Heredity- Environment Controversy, 1683-1940 Ann Arbor, Mich., University Microfilms, Inc.,1970).

13Farrall,English Eugenics Movement, p.30

14Haller, Eugenics, p.11

15FrancisGalton, cited by Farrall, English Eugenics Movement, p.31. 16FrancisGalton, Natural Inheritance (New York:

Macmillan and Co., 1889 . 39

17Cravens,Heredity-Environment Controversy, p.11

18Farrall,English Eugenics Movement, p.40.

19Cravens, Heredity-EnvironmentControversy, p.12. 20Ibid., p.14 21Farrall,English Eugenics Movement, P-42

22Haller, Eugenics, p.59

23KennethLudmerer, Genetics and the American Society: A Historical Appraisal (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univer- sity Press, 1972), p. 8. 24Haller,Eugenics, p.63 251bid.

26Cravens,Heredity-Environment Controversy, p.16.

27Ludmerer, Genetics, p.49. 28Cravens,Heredity-Environment Controversy, p.18.

29Haller, Eugenics, p.67.

30Ludmerer, Genetics, p.50.

31Ibid., P.50-59. 32Haller, Eugenics, p.70

33Henry Goddard, The Kallikak Famil : A Study in the Heredity of Feeblemindedness, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913). 34Ibid., p.51 351bid., p.50 36Ibid. 37Haller, Eugenics, p.107.

38Goddard,Kallikak Family, p.117.

39Haller,Eugenics, p.111 40

40Thetests were named after Alfred Binet (1857-1911), French psychologist who, impressed with Galton's standardized tests to measure the psychology of individual differences, adapted those methods to include visual testing material, paving the way for projective testing. His scales for measuring intelligence were widely used between 1905 and 1911 and showed that one to three percent of the population was feebleminded, including a large proportion of the armed forces, and the majority of the nation's criminals, prostitutes, tramps, and paupers. The tests were later shown to be biased on the basis of the subject's cultural heritage, as discussed in Haller, Eugenics, p.96.

4lHailer,Eugenics, 119. 42Ibid.,p.121. 431bid.,p.123.

44Ludmerer,Genetics, p.79.

45Haller,Eugenics, p.129.

46lbid.,p.131.

471bid.,p.133.

481bid.

491bid.,p.137. 50Ibid...p.lL1. SlLudmerer,Genetics, p.91

52lbid.,p.92. 53Haller,Eugenics, p.140.

540liverWendell Holmes, 1927, cited by Haller, Eugenics, p.139. 55Ludmerer.Genetics, p.87-90.

56MadisonGrant, The Passing of the Great Race (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916).

57Ludmerer,Genetics, p.99 41

58Haller,Eugenics, p.151.

59Ludmerer, Genetics, p.113. 60Haller, Eugenics,p.155. 61 Ludmerer, Genetics, p.113. 62 Daniel Halacy, The Genetic Revolution: Shaping Life for Tomorrow (New York: Harper & Row, 1974)o p.97. 42

III. PIONEER ADVOCATE OF EUGENICS IN OREGON: BETHENIA ANGELINA OWENS-ADAIR The unquestioned "pioneer advocate" of eugenics and

eugenic sterilization legislation in Oregon was thestate's first woman doctor, Bethenia AngelinaOwens-Adair(1840-1926).1 During her lifetime this influential Oregonian also promoted temperance, prohibition legislation, women's-rights, and suffrage along with her work ineugenics.2 Born in 1840 inMissouri,she was the second of nine childrenof Thomas and Sarah DamronOwens. The family moved west to Oregon in 1843 as part of the first pioneer settlement of the PacificNorthwest. They first settled on the Clatsop Plains near Astoria,.then laterin the Umpqua Valley,across the river from Roseburg. Owens-Adair received no formal schooling until the age of12. At thattime she attended a three-month session held by an itinerant teacher passing through her neighborhood.

On May4, 1854,at the ageof14, she married Legrand Hill,

who had formerly been a farmhand for her father. Two years later her only son wasborn. At age18,she divorced herhusband,won custody of her child andresumed her maiden name. That same year she entered a Roseburg elementary school to complete her basic education alongside her younger brothers and sisters.In 1860 she moved to Astoria-and for the next five years attended classes while supporting 43 herself and her child by taking in laundry-and selling wild blackberries, and by a succession of teaching jobs.

By 1867 Owens-Adair was back in Roseburg where she taught herself to make hats and subsequently opened a dressmaking and millinery shop. She turned over her successful business to a sister after six years and moved to

Philadelphia to pursue a career in medicine. After a year of training at the Eclectic Medical College in Philadelphia, she returned to Portland with her M.D. degree.

Specializing in women's and children's afflictions,

Owens-Adair set up her Portland practice in 1874 and offered "medicated vapor baths combined with electricity in treating rheumatism and chronicdiseases."3 Unfortunately, the dean of the Eclectic Medical College was subsequently convicted of selling bogus degrees, and Owens-Adair became known as a "bath doctor" among orthodox physicians.

In 1878, at the age of 38, Owens-Adair again left Portland for Philadelphia to seek admission to an orthodox medical college. Turned down at Jefferson College because she was a woman, Owens-Adair enrolled instead at the University of Michigan Medical School. Following her grad- uation in 1880, she spent a summer of clinical and hospital work in Chicago, completed another six months of postgraduate study in Michigan and toured several hospitals in Europe.

With these impressive credentials, Owens-Adair returned to 44

Portland in the fall of 1881 and setup a second, more orthodox and highly successful practice.

During the next twenty years, Owens-Adair becamea respected and well-known leader in the medicalprofession

and was quite active in the Oregon State MedicalSociety. Along with her. professionalcareer, she remained an outspoken advocate for women's rights and temperance.

But her impact was greatest in the eugenics movement, a cause she did not actively support until after her

retirement in 1905. By this time she had married Colonel

John Adair, a West Point graduate whomshe had known in her youth. They made their home on Sunnymead Farmnear Astoria, which in time became the hub of her eugenics campaign.

Owens-Adair first introduced her eugenic sterilization bill into the Oregon legislature in 1907, theyear Indiana adopted the nation's first sterilization law. The Oregon bill died in the legislature, but Owens-Adair reintroduced it in each successive session until it passed in 1913.

However, Oregon's Governor West vetoed the 1913 bill, which was later put to a referendum and defeated. Owens-Adair was encouraged, however, by the 41,000 Oregonians who voted that year in favor of the measure. Her human sterilization bill was again introduced into the legislature in 1917. This time it passed and was signed into law by Oregon's

Governor Withycombe. A revised version of the bill was 45 introduced and passed in the 1919 legislative session, and both laws were included in the codification of Oregon laws in 1920.

With the success of hersterilization bill, Owens-Adair wrote: "I prophesy that our nation will awake, and arise, as one man, and one woman, and the cleansing work will begin. I believe it will not require more than one century to effectually close the doors of our penitentiaries, insane asylums, rescue homes, reform schools, and all like institutions, under whose burdens we are now groaning, mentally, physically, and financially. May God speed the time, is myprayer."4

Owens-Adair did not live to see if her prophesy was accurate; she died in 1926 of inflammation of the heart at age 86. In her will she provided funds to establish a eugenics institute at Warrenton. Because of subsequent misuse of the monies, the institute was never built. However, Owens-Adair did live to see the success of her three major social reform campaigns. Oregon granted women the right to vote by an amendment to their state constitution in 1912. In 1919, Oregon ratified the Eighteenth

Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, enforcing prohibition. And, after the codification of her sterilization bill into the Oregon laws, Owens-Adair watched the formation of the Oregon State Board of Eugenics, created to enforce the the provisions of her sterilization law. 46 Chapter III References 'EdwardJames, ed., Notable American Women 1607-19 O: A Biographical Dictionary, vol.2 (Cambridge Harvard University Press), Owens-Adair, Bethenia Angelina" by Edwin Bingham.

2Themost complete reference on the life of Owens-Adair is her own autobiography: Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Experiences (Portland, Or.: Mann & Beach, 1922). Also see: Linda Currey, "A Solitary Figure Through the Wilderness," Portland Physician, November 1975, p.18-20; and "Owens-Adair Began Local Survival of the Fittest," Willamette Week (Portland, Or.) 1 December 1975, sec.l, p.6.

3EdwardJames, Notable American Women, p.657.

40wens-Adair,Life Experiences, p.388. 47

IV. OWENS-ADAIR IN RELATION TO NINETEENTH CENTURY SOCIAL HISTORY

A. Women's Suffrage

As a spirited female social reformer, Owens-Adair found good company and good cause in the women's suffrage movement. Owens-Adair was an active "suffrage canvasser" in Oregon, speaking on behalf of the movement at community meetings and contributing to Oregon's suffrage publications. Owens-Adair had met and idolized one of the nationally known leaders of the cause, Susan Anthony, and kept up an acquaintance with Abigail Scott Duniway, Oregon's primary suffrage leader. To evaluate the influence of the women's rights movement on Owens-Adair's work, a brief history of the struggle to gain the vote for women is appropriate. The women involved in that struggle believe thehistory of the suffrage movement was made by dedicated and determined women who ignored severe criticism and ridiculeand continued to support their cause despite several legal setbacks. This is much the same picture Owens-Adair paints of her own struggle to gain eugenic legislation. The organized fight for women's suffrage spanned more than seventy years. Although all women, including working- class, foreign-born, and Negro women, got the votein 1919, historians of the suffrage movement have characterizedits participants as white, native-born, middle-class women. 48

During the nineteenth century it was middle-class women who acquired some little education and had the leisure time to participate in activities outside the home. Their opportunities also made them painfully aware of the discrepancy between their social and economic status and their lack of political power. Thisgap was a strong force leading middle-class women to demandthe vote.l

The long and painful fight for women's suffrage has been characterized as a chapter in America's intellectual history. The suffragists were forced to fight not only age-old institutions, but the ideas that enforced those institutions. In speaking out against those ideas the suffragists developed a standard repertoire of arguments. These arguments, as espoused by members of the national suffrage association, came to represent "suffragism" to the American people.2

According to leaders of tlsuffrage movement, the institutions they rebelled against dated back to before the

American revolution. The revolution, they said, overturned the idea of the divine right of kings to rule over mankind. However, the revolution had left untouched the idea of the divine right of man to rule over women. That idea had been handed down over the centuries withoutopposition: "Men and women believed it with equal sincerity, the church taught it, customswere basedupon it, the law endorsed it, and the causes which created the belief had been so long lostin 49 obscurity that men claimed authority for it in the 'laws of

God.' All opposition to the enfranchisement of women emanated from thattheory."3 The suffragists believed that a country that rallied around the idea that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed could not selectively deny such consent to a large part of its citizenry.

The majority of American women certainly did not protest their denied access to the political system. The average woman of the early nineteenth century was portrayed as timid, self-distrustful, and untrained:"Taught thatit was unwomanly to hold opinions upon serious subjects,that men most admired clinging weakness in women, and thatwoman's one worthy ambition was to secure men's admiration,it is no wonder that women made little effortto think for themselves."4 No wonder indeed, for the status of women at the time

the move for women's suffrage began was quite dismal. Married women were considered their husband's propertyand her legal rights were so dependent on those of her husband that she was said to be "dead in law." The husband controlled his wife's property, collected and used her wages, selected her

food and clothing and that of their children, and determined

the education and religion of their children. The husband could will the children, including unborn children, to other

guardians, and could physically punish his wife, within 50 prevailing limits of severity, if she offended him.

To a great degree men limited their wives' freedom of thought, speech, and action. Women were not encouraged to be independent in home or business affairs and "what women were unaccustomed to do the world believed them incapable ofdoing." At the start of the nineteenth century most educational opportunitieswereclosed to women: no college in the world admitted females and no high schools were open to girls. Even the practice of religion was not fully open to women; with few exceptions, churches prohibited women from preaching, testifying, voting, and even praying and singing during services. In many churches women were seated on one side and men on the other so that the "men might commend themselves to God withoutinterruption."6 Single women fared no better than their married sisters. Women of middle or upper class standing disgraced themselves and their family if they took a job. Therefore, an unmarried woman of such classes became adependent in the home of her nearest male relative. Even though she may have owned property, and in that sense been somewhat independent, her status was not enhanced. From such sad beginning the women's suffrage movement began. But it did not begin as a quest for the vote. Women were finally compelled to leave their seclusion and enter public affairs not to plead their own cause but to join the anti-slavery and anti-liquor movementsthat gained strength between 1800 and 1850. What effect the women had

on these movements during that time period is notclear but it is clear they were not welcomed by themale reformers.

In the 1830s a few women began to publicallysupport various causes, notably abolition. But the anti-slavey forces did not welcome the women's participation. One woman abolitionist wrote, "We have given greatoffense on account of our womanhood, which seems to beas objectionable as our abolitionism."7 This reaction by male abolitionists indicated that women had to secure theirown freedom of speech and action before they could effectively fight for the rights of others.

The first organized action taken to win the vote for women was the First Woman's Rights Convention held in

Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. A declaration passed by that convention listed several grievances: foremostwas the denial of women's right to elective franchise; others included women's inferior status in economic, political, social, domestic, and religious matters. Also, a resolution was made to demand equal pay for women working alongside men.

This womens' rights convention set the stage for others that followed in nearby states. Though the press and the public remained hostile to the idea of suffrage, effective spokespersons for the cause emerged from these conventions, and the movement was organized on a national scale. 52

By 1868, the year the 14th Amendment tothe U. S. Con-

stitution was passed, the lines of battlewere drawn. That amendment, ratified on July 28, 1868,was a blow to the women's rights movement. While that amendment guaranteed

voting privileges to United Statescitizens, it defined a citizen as a taxpayingmaleover the age of 21.

The American Equal Rights Association,organized in 1866, declared that suffrageshould be granted to all native and naturalized citizens, whether maleor female. To that end they tried, but failed, to include the phrase "without distinction founded on sex," in the 14thAmendment.

Sentiment against women's suffrage receivedample press coverage in the 1870s. Female supporters of the right to vote were described as having "hook-billednoses, crow's feet under sunken eyes, and a mellow tinting in the hair."

Another report declared that normalwomen rule "the world by a glance of the eye," and therefore haveno need for the vote.

In 1872 the Republican national platform cautiously supported the women's movement: "The Republican party, mindful of its obligations to the loyalwomen of America expresses gratification that wider avenues of employment have opened to women, and it further declares that her demands for additional rights should be treated with respectful consideration." This endorsement was the first from a national political party. 53

The goals of the suffragistswere certainly not unan-

imously supported by thewomen of America. The same year the suffragistswon the endorsement of the Republican party,

women anti-suffragists began to petitionCongress to protect them from enfranchisement. They argued that the Holy Scrip- tures taught them to filla "higher sphere" quite apart from public life:

we find a full measure ofcares, duties,responsibilities devolvingupon us, and are therefore unwilling to bear other heavierburdens and those unsuited to our physical organization . . . that an extension of suffrage would be adverse to the interests of the workingwomen of the country .. .and because these changes would introducea fruitfulelement of discord into the existing marriagerelation,which would tend to the infinitedetriment of children and increase the alreadywarmingprevalence of divorce throughout the land. The indifference of the majority of American women to their political inequality was one of the most formidable obstacles to the suffrage movement.But, as one of the leaders of the movement often repeated, the dulling of the

desire for freedom through long centuries of suppressionwas the best proof of its desirability.10 In 1878 a resolution was introduced into Congresson behalf of the national suffrage association.Forty-two years later that resolution became the 19th Amendment and read: The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.Congress shall have power t1lenforce this article by appropriate legislation. 54

During the four decades between the introduction of this resolution and its passage the Democratic and Republican parties, according to an officer of the National American

Woman Suffrage Association, "made woman suffrage their football." She said the Congressmen rarely considered the issue of women's suffrage, but when they did it was on an emotional and never rational basis: To read the speeches delivered by these Solons at the hearings is enough to make reason totter on its throne. It was not unusual to have the same manargue first that women should not be enfranchised because if given the vote they would spend all their time on politics, leaving home, husband, and children neglected; and second that they should not be enfranchised because they did not want the vote, would no2use it and were not interested in politics. Ultimately, this political feet-dragging probablyhurt the legislators more than it hurt thesuffragists' spirit. After party endorsement of women's suffrage wasfinally won, onewoman wrote: when the final victory camewomen werealternately indignant that it had been so long incoming, and amazed that it had come at all. Manymen expressed disappointment that women did not at once enterthe party campaigns with the samezeal and consecration they had shown in the struggle for the vote. These men forgot that the dominant politicalparties blocked thenormal progressof women sy5frage for half a century. The womenremembered. To swing public and congressional opinionin favor of women'ssuffrage, the suffragists began an enthusiastic campaignthat includedsoap boxspeeches, whistle-stop speakingtours, rallies, parades, and appealsto the 55 legislators through private interviews and lobbying efforts. These activities received wide coverage in the general press as well as in thesuffragists'own publications. The accounts written by suffragists of their efforts indicate a rather undauntable spirit in support of their cause, even in the face of verbal insult or physical abuse. The efforts and the success of these campaigners, most of whom had had no training in political methods, was extraordinary. Without radios or effective "talkingpictures"to help popularize theircause,the suffragists took to the streets and made a personal appeal to thevoters. Knowing that the enfranchised men would not attend women's suffrage meetings, the ladies tried to reach the male voters through corner lectures, streetmeetings,and even by following men into their places ofrecreation. One suffragist remembered: In the days of trailing skirts and picture hats to see a woman mount a soap box on a street corner,or stand on the back seat of an automobile, and begin toorate,was so startling that men could not help but stop andlisten. The street meetings were so effective that soon . . . women held their meetings on street corners or public squares, wherever traffic washeaviest,with gay banners and muchliterature. They haunted every place where mengathered. Hisclubs,his conventions, his amusement places, were never safe from the danger of a speech demanding votes forwomen. Vaudeville performances were staged by suffragi ts. They spoke between the acts intheatres.l' Another effective tactic was the parades stagedin support of women'ssuffrage. The parades drew women 56

participants from all social classes, and by 1915 the parades were drawing more than 40,000 marchers. One of the most

effective parades was thought to be the march held at the time of President Thomas Woodrow Wilson's-(1856-1924) inaugural in 1913:

About 8,000 women were in line and tremendous crowds had turned out to watch the elaborate spectacle, with its floats, banners and beautiful costumes. Hoodlums were allowed by the police to break through the procession, slap, trip up, spit upon and insult the marching women. Some floats were pulled off, others were knocked down, and one of the most disgraceful scenes ever enacted on the streets of the capital shocked those who watched while the police stood idly by. Soldiers'9om Fort Meyer were called to restore order.

The mistreatment of the marchers in the inaugural day parade actually helped the suffrage cause. A later

Congressional investigation and subsequent dismissal of the chief of police generated enough publicity to stir new interest in the movement.

Continuing coverage of the suffragists' struggle was undoubtedly boosted by the National American Woman Suffrage

Association, which operated its own press council. The council was charged with "creating news and thus increasing publicity, and of seeing that anti-suffrage articles and editorials were adequately answered." Between 1890 and 1920, a number of states adopted constitutional amendments granting partial suffrage to women.

In an executive session in 1916, the national suffrage 57 association drew up plans to encourage state legislatures to press for a congressional women's suffrage amendment. As part of thatplan,fifteen members of the association were directed to move to Washington where they "served as an outpost of information andadvice,keeping in close touch with our friends in the Congress and trying to enlist the support of political and otherleaders. This committee formed the nucleus of our lobby . . . (which)came to be known as "the front doorlobby,"a name given us by one of the press gallery men because we never used backstairs methods."16 While interviewing legislators to seek support for women'ssuffrage,the suffragists were expected to follow strictguidelines. They were instructed not to stay too long,nag,threaten,talk where they could be overheard, draw out arguments against the suffrage amendment, or "do anything to close the door on the next advocate for suffrage." According to thelobbyists,the task of interviewing legislators to gain their support of women's suffrage was a tedious and time consuming one, demanding patience, perserverance,and a sense of humor: It includes interviews with members of Congress preceded by innumerable fruitless attempts to makeappointments;hours spent walking the corridors of the House and Senate office buildings trying to run to earth some man not too busy or too indifferent to seeyou;sitting in his office listening patiently and with good humor to arguments which you have had dished up by 58

dozens of other Congressmen; toreasons which are unconvincing; to funny stories with no point; putting up with abuse and misunderstanding; hearing with long and boring reminiscencesof female relatives who do not want the vote,or possibly do; trying to pin him down toa definite promise to vote for the amendment and leaving the office to go through¶ l this again with the next man interviewed.

The lobbyists' efforts, ofcourse, were finally

successful; the 19th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919. After state ratification, the 19th Amendmentwas adopted on August 26, 1920.

Suffragists attributed the long and frustrating wait for the vote to the "biological foundation of male resistance to female aggrandisement" combined with the failure of politicians to recognize "the inescapable logic ofwoman suffrage in a landprofessing universal suffrage."19 With their ultimate victory came a sense of lasting sadness for the women suffragists, dismayed that their fight for an inalienable right had been so long andso vigorous. This sadness, in many cases, turned into resent- ment against the American political system:

American women who know the history of their country will always resent the fact that Americanmen chose to enfranchise Negroes fresh from slavery before enfranchising American wives and mothers, and allowed hordes of European immigrants totally unfamiliar with the tradition and ideals of American government to be enfranchised in all States after naturalization, and in fifteen states without it, and be thus qualified to passupon the question of the enfranchisement of American women.20 59

Ten years after the meeting of the First Woman's Rights

Convention of 1848, Owens-Adair took the firststep toward

her own emancipation by divorcingher husband. She was 18 years old and recoveringfrom a bout with typhoid fever,

and was caring for her sickly two-year-oldson. Her father, proud of the fact that there had.never been a divorce in

his family, begged her not to leave her husband. But, by Owens-Adair's accounts, her husbandwas not an adequate provider and was physically abusive to her and their child.

So, she opted for divorce, even though she felt "the stigma. would cling to me all my future life."

At that time, divorce was not a socially accepted remedy to a bad marriage, as illustrated in this exchange between Owens-Adair shortly after her separation anda neighbor named Mrs..Morrison. "Bethenia, why did you leave your husband?" the neighbor asked. "Because he whipped my baby unmercifully and struck and choked me--and I was never born to be struck by a mortal mani" "But did he commit adultery?" Mrs. Morrison asked. "No," was the reply. "Then my dear child," Mrs. Morrison said, "take my advice, and go back, and beg him on your knees to receive you,--for the scriptures forbid the separation of man and wife for any other cause thanadultery."21

Owens-Adair, of course, did not take her neighbor's advice, and in the spring of 1859 won the custody of her child and the right to resume her maiden name by a court 60 decision. She wrote: "After the decree of the court was rendered giving me custody of my child, and my father's name, which I have never since discarded, and never will, I felt like a free woman."22 So, in an era when most women were considered their husband's property with no legal rights of their own,

Owens-Adair was able to detach herself, after a spirited courtroom argument, from her husband. Going against the societal role of the single woman, she set out to support herself and her child. Although she did not do the factory work that, during the industrial revolution, brought women away from their homes and into the workplace, Owens-Adair was forced, rather abruptly, to join the working world.

For a while she worked on her parents' farm, then, striking out on her own, she "sought work in all honorable directions, even accepting washing, which was one of the most profitable occupations considered 'proper' for women in those days." However, Owens-Adair found her lack of education a considerable barrier. At the time of herdivorce, Owens- Adair "could scarcely read or write" having received just a few lessons in her childhood from an itinerant school teacher. After her divorce, Owens-Adair attended primary school with her younger siblings in Roseburg and mastered the basics of spelling, writing, geography, and arithmetic. 61

After a move to Astoria to be near her sister, Owens-

Adair grew tired of doing washing as a means of support,

which brought in only $1.00-to $1.50 each week. She declared:

"I am determined to get at leasta common school education. I now know that I can support and educate myself and my boy, and I am resolved to do it: furthermore, I do not intend to do it over the washtub, either."22

With this determination, she began teaching grammar

school on the Clatsop Plains. Since the students were more

advanced than she was in her schooling, she studied furiously

each night to stay ahead of them. Of her students she wrote,

"they never suspected my incompetency."By teaching and sewing for the local ladies, she eventually saved $400 and with this small fortune bought a half-lot in Astoria and had a cottage built. A woman owning property was an unusual

thing and her accomplishment "won the respect of all." She later returned to Roseburg where she set up her own dressmaking and millinery shop, a venture that proved quite successful--and demanding. She wrote:

Work brought its own pleasure, and sweet rewards. Five a.m. never found me in bed, though often did I awake at two a.m. in my chair, with my work still in hand. But the young are soon rested, and as a change of work gives rest and health, I was blest with both. I had a time and place for everything, and have found adherence to this rule throughout my life to be one of the greatest aids to success in any pursuit.23 At the time of her divorce and later in her life,

Owens-Adair found herself "surrounded with difficulties 62

seemingly insurmountable." In response'she "realized my

position fully, and resolved to meet it bravely, and do my

very best."

In early life, Owens-Adair showed many qualities typical

of the women's suffrage supporters who were to become a

very vocal and powerful force in social reform. Owens-Adair

was willing to break social taboo by getting a divorce, was resourceful and aggressive enough to support herself and her child, and recognized the importance of education in

achieving her goals. She came to believe there was no

difference between men's and women's intellectual or physical abilities and, when she became interested in medicine, was appalled to find differences in educational

and career opportunities. Owens-Adair's ideas reflected the spirit of the national women's suffrage movement, and in fact, she was

influential in giving the movement considerable force in

Oregon. She arranged the first public suffrage speech in Oregon,. helped start Oregon's first suffrage newspaper, and made several speeches promoting women's rights, including an address before the Oregon Woman Suffrage Association. Owens-Adair was acquainted with Abigail Scott Duniway (1831-1915), the leader of the Oregon suffrage movement, and their lives were similar in several respects.4Both

came to Oregon with the first wagon-train settlers, and

both supported themselves and their children after their 63 husbands proved unreliable. Coincidentally, both ran millinery shops for a time. Owens-Adair and Duniway both

travelled statewide in support of suffrage and penned many

articles for Duniway's suffrage paper, The New Northwest.

Owens-Adair's son also worked for The New Northwest while boarding with Anthony for a short time.

Just as Owens-Adair led the Oregon voters through five eugenic sterilization campaigns, Duniway personally

led Oregon through five of its six suffrage campaigns, held

in 1887, 1900, 1906, 1908, and 1910. One historian believes

the Oregon voters--who participated in more suffrage

campaigns than any other state--were hesitant to vote in favor of suffrage because of their antagonism toward Duniway's

abrasive campaign techniques. Owens-Adair, whose eugenic legislation campaign tactics were based on her experiences

in the suffrage fight, may have provoked a similar response 25 from Oregon voters. In the end, it is said that Duniway's "belief in her own powers and judgment eventually turned into unbridled vanity." Owens-Adair's memoirs show evidence of the same

sort of vanity. But perhaps that never-faltering self- confidence was the key to the women's ultimate success in their suffrage and eugenics campaigns. Interestingly, both women outlived most of their compatriots; Duniway died at age 81 and Owens-Adair at 86. 64

Owens-Adair attributed her conversion towomen's

suffrage to a careful reading ofThe Revolution, one of

the first national suffragenewspapers. That paper was

edited and published by Susan Anthony(1820-1906),a leader

of the national suffragemovement. Apparently Anthony had

a profound effect on Owens-Adair, for she wrote:"I owe much of the success ofmy life to the brave words and deeds of this foster mother.,26

In her address before the Woman'sCongress held in Portland in 1896, Owens-Adairrecalled the difficulties of

being a suffragette twenty-fiveyears earlier, when she was a milliner in Roseburg:

Away back in those days when Iwas struggling, not only for an education, but for breadfor myself and my child, it was not pleasant,nor was it profitable, to be called a "blue-stocking." It required more than commoncourage, as all pioneer suffragists can testify, to withstand theopposi- tion, and endure the sarcastic smiles and distrust of the better classes,-and thesneers and jeers, and even "rotten eggs" of the rabble.27 By the time Owens-Adair mounted her eugenics campaign in

1905, then, she had already had experience dealingwith a wary and sometimes hostile public. Certainly her formidable defense of eugenics was butressed by her earlier struggles to be heard on the suffrage issue.

During her early suffrage days, Owens-Adair wrote, an

"honorable" Senator made a "most remarkable speech" in

Congress against an equal suffrage bill. "We don't want our wives and daughters to be mathematicians, philosophers, 65 or scientists," he said. "We don't love and honor them for what they know of such things, but rather for what they don't know. These things are not necessary for women.

They are better off without such knowledge. Woman's place is the home, and it is her duty to love and care for her husband, and his children.,27 Clearly, Owens-Adair thought these sentiments to be hogwash.

At the 1896 Woman's Congress, Owens-Adair was hostess to both Susan Anthony and Abigail Duniway. At the Congress,

Anthony and Owens-Adair reminisced about their first meeting on November 15, 1871. Owens-Adair was then a milliner and suffragist in Roseburg and Anthony had requested that

Owens-Adair arrange for a lecture hall and drum up an audience to attend Anthony's suffrage speech.

After quite a lot of difficulty Owens-Adair was able to secure for the suffrage speech the largest church in Roseburg, "a little village of 500 souls and sixteen saloons."Although the owner of Roseburg's largest saloon offered a free supper and "anti-Anthony dance" the same night, the lecture was well attended and Owens-Adair was "gratified beyond all expression with our success. It gave me new courage and determination to adhere to myconvictions."28 Susan Anthony was also impressed with Owens-Adair after their Roseburg meeting. Anthony's reaction was characterized in this 1914 passage written by Abigail Duniway: 66

The autumn rains were in their glory in Portland before Miss Anthony finally leftus, going by stage to Sacramento, and lecturing at stopover stations along the way. She informed me regularly of the incidents of her journey by letter, and I particularly recall her favorable mention of Dr. Barthenia Owens, of Roseburg (now Dr. Owens-Adair), who arrangeda successful meeting for her at the Douglas County Court House and entertained her in her home. The Doctor is now a retired physician, and . . . is honored now by the medical profession, which formerly denounced and ridiculed all such women as "freaks."29

Evidently the leaders of the national suffrage movement

regarded Owens-Adair as an important contributor to the cause, and a fine example for all aspiring women.

In promoting the cause of women's suffrage, Owens-Adair

often turned to the press. She had an easy command of the written word and was able to phrase her arguments quite

convincingly. She took pen in hand to promote all of her several causes--women's suffrage, equal educational opportunities, temperance, prohibition, and finally, eugenics.

The first articles she wrote appeared in The New Northwest, Oregon's suffrage paper, in support of the vote for women.

In an article dated 1870, Owens-Adair summarized her argument: "All that we ask, all that we entreat, is that our cause shall be investigated, analyzed, sifted, and if itbe not the true metal, of solid principle, let it burn, like dross. The right of suffrage is an inalienable right, witheld wrongfully from woman by her brother, man. No human being who will reasonably and conscientiously 67

investigate this principle will fail to become a convert to it . . . Indeed . . . there is not another principle in the wide world that I so dearly cherish, for there is no other power that can be compared with the power of the ballot."30Like the first suffragists who realized they must win the vote for themselves before achieving other reforms, Owens-Adair realized her proposed societal changes would only be achieved through the power of the ballot.

A friend once described Owens-Adair as an unswervingly

"loyal and powerful champion of her own sex." Indeed, she never seemed to miss an opportunity to promote the intellectual and physical development of women. In her speech before the Portland Woman's Congress, Owens-Adair emphasized that there was little difference in the potential of men and women:

Is there any difference between woman's work and men's work? Is there anything under the sun that muscle or mind can do that the new woman cannot accomplish? We have no fear that the "new woman" will not find a place in the poet's theme, as well as in his heart. She will not cease to be the "ministering angel," the very inspiration of life. Like the fine gold that comes from the furnace, she will come forth, clothed in all the beauty and strength of a pure womanhood, for she will have been cleansed of the dross of dependence, helplessness and prejudice of past ages. Indeed, up to the present time, what has man dons that woman could not do, or has not done? 1 Owens-Adair expressed here and on many other occasions the basis for her belief in her own abilities, and her determination to use those abilities to the fullest. 68

And Owens-Adair believed that other women were doing a credible job of fulfilling their abilities, even when it meant breaking into new behavior roles. In one of many speeches delivered to promote the cause of women's rights,

Owens-Adair summarized the progress of women during the nineteenth century:

Less than half a century ago, there were but few ways in which women could earn a respectable living; and those few were hedged about with many obstacles; the question being the supposed greatly superior intelligence and ability of man over woman. College doors and universities were closed against her, but . . . recent years have changed those conditions, until now that question is no longer debatable. Experience has taught that girls do make efficient "bread-winners." It was always held that woman was made for man, but whether or no man was made for woman was not conceded until the Anglo-Saxon woman proved herself as capable, as willing, and as intelligent as her brother. Then the questionas solved to the satisfaction of all concerned. But, as Owens-Adair remarked, these more reasoned attitudes toward the abilities of women only started to develop during her lifetime. When, in the early 1870s Owens-Adair decided to pursue her interest in medicine, she found many academic doors still closed to women. The nineteenth century did mark the first large-scale entry of women into the medical field, but that door was not an easy one to open. 69

B. Women in Medicine

Nineteenth century medicine was characterized by discontent among the medical practitioners. Dozens of medical sects, each with a particular healing philosophy, arose, including the homeopaths, eclectics, botanists, phrenologists, and water-cure men. These sects played a large role in the medical treatment of 19th century Americans.33

These sects developed in opposition to the so-called

"regular" or allopathic doctors. The fight between the regular and irregular sect physicians continued throughout the 19th century.

The regular doctors practiced "heroic" healing. This treatment included bleeding the patient until the pulse ceased orthe patient fainted, blistering the patient, and purging the patient through administrationof massive doses of calomel, a mercury-based laxative. Blood-letting was thought to reduce a vascular fullness thatexisted as illness began that blocked drug therapy. Purging with calomel was thought to modifysecretionsof the liver and reversesluggishness.34 The regulars formed their first national organization, the AmericanMedical Association, in 1847. The majormedical sect, which reached its zenith by the mid-nineteenth century, was homeopathy. Part of its popularitywas due to an avoidance of theextreme measures 70 of heroic practice. The homeopaths offered "pleasant

water medicine instead ofcastor oil and calomel,"a formula sure to bemore popular than purging and blood- letting.35

The homeopathic practice ofadministering highly diluted quantities of drugsdrew severe criticism from

the regulars, who found thetiny doses absurd. A supporter of homeopathic practicewrote in defense of that sect:

Common sense is no guide in suchmatters, as everybody knows who has the slightest knowledge of the history of science. "Common sense" said for a long time that thesun moved round the earth; but common sensewas wrong. Therefore, we say allopathic doctors may not insiston "the demonstrable absurdity"of the homeopathic practice, for the simplereason that they cannot "demonstrate" it . . .

But by the end of the nineteenthcentury, there had been a "gradual shift in the status of homeopathy,from the dignity of a system to the heresy of medical thought."6

This change signalled the increasing effectiveness of regular medicine.37

While American medicine was in a period of transition a century ago, other aspects of American society were undergoing change as well. For example, over the centuries women had traditionally been considered subordinate to men.

With the industrial revolution, both men and women were attracted to the cities in search of jobs, and for the first time, women were employed outside the home. 71 Another transitionary factor was the belief in the

"perfectability of society" and the faith in "progress"

that developed in the late 1700s. By the mid-nineteenth century the rational thinking of the enlightenment era had fused with more romantic notions to produce social

reform movements of "evangelical enthusiasm." These reform movements included the temperance and anti-slavery campaigns, and the women's rights movement.38

Equal educational opportunities and the right of women to enter the various professions were among the demands

of women's rights campaigners. The feminists regarded the entry of women into medicine as a visible test case for their

entire movement, therefore, they encouraged it at each opportunity.39

A crusade waged for reform in personal hygiene also

affected women's entry into medicine. The movement's leader,

Sylvester Graham, now remembered for his Graham crackers, promoted sex hygiene and encouraged dietary improvements,

dress reform, and physical excersises for the ladies. As a result of his lectures "Ladies Physiological Reform

Societies" were established and the more courageous women lectured society members on anatomy and physiology. As this practice became more common, there arose a need for medically trained women to teach sex and general hygiene training. Many of the women who first entered medicine did so to prepare for teaching such lessons. 72

This concern was related to a general demand by women to have female practitioners in obstetrics and gynecology.

Women claimed that male obstetric practitioners were an offense to modesty.

Evidence shows that because of embarrassment, women often did not seek treatment from available male doctors for severe gynecological disorders. This early Victorian period, when many ladies who attended anatomy lectures were subject to frequent fainting spells, has been called the pinnacle of middle-class, Anglo-Saxon prudery.

The picture of women so weak in constitution and so filled with modesty that they fainted during anatomy lessons fits with the generally romanticized notion of women in the nineteenth century. Women were considered to be the weaker sex, both physically and mentally, and their weakness was thought to be innate rather than environmentally caused. A well-regarded physician, writing in an obstetrics textbook in 1848, described women's character, saying that "the great administrative faculties" that make men great orators and legislators are not found in women. Rather, itshe reignsin the heart....Home is herplace,except when, like the star of day, she deigns to issue forth to the world, to exhibit her beauty and her grace...and then she goes back to her home, like as the sun sinks in the west, and the memory of her presence is like a bright departedday."40This physician's conclusion says a great 73 deal about society's attitude toward women at the time:

"She has a head almost too small for intellect but just big enough for love." Physicians postulated biologic differences between women of different social classes that corresponded with the ladies' general health. Coincidentally, working women of the lower classes,who were not in a good position to pay for medical services, were thought to be innately healthy. On the other hand, women of the upper classes were considered to be chronically weak and in needof constant medical attention. This attitude toward upper- class females helped characterize them as unfit to become physiciansthemselves.41 And, physicians wrote that women trying to enter fields previously dominated by men were doing themselves irreparable physical damage due to the

"deleterious irritation" of the outside world on their nervoussystems.42 Generally, nineteenth century physicians warned women not to force their intellect beyondits natural capacity. As one physician wrote in 1889: Women beware! You are on the brink of destruction. You have hitherto been engaged only in crushing your waists; now you are attempting to cultivate your mindl You have been merely dancing all night in the foul air of the ball-room; now you are beginning to spend your morningsin

study. . . . Bewarel oh bewarel science pronounces that the woman whostudies islost. 1.4.3 Despite such warnings, by the late 1840s women had 74 proven they could succeed in medical schools. The first medical school for women, the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia, was founded in 1850. At about thesame time, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in this country to receive a regular medical degree, an honor she earned from the Geneva MedicalCollege.44

The mid-nineteenth century was the era of proprietary schools, which granted degrees after two terms of study and which were filled with low caliber students. The undis- tinguished state of medical education at the time probably encouraged the admission of women into these schools. In addition, medical sects including homeopathy and eclecticism were struggling for survival and more eager to accept women into the ranks. An eclectic college in New York admitted women in 1849 and other irregular schools accepted both men and women in the 1850s. Women who chose to enter the medical profession were thought to be simply imitating men. Even in 1910 it was thought that women physicians could be recognized by their mannish dress, temperment, and character. In 1871, the president of the American Medical Association declared in an address before that group: Certain women seek to rival men in manly sport... and the strong-minded ape them in all things, even indress. In doingso,they may command a sort of admiration such as all monstrous productions inspire, especially when theYtend towards a higher type than their own.45 75

As medical historian Richard Shryock points out,

"There is no telling just how much ridicule of this sort handicapped women physicians. They were at a disadvantage here, because in a profession where all the norms had been set by men some imitation was inevitable. The obstacles facing women, moreover, inspired a challenge only in those who were unusually resolute and determined.46

One factor promoting the ridicule of and opposition toward medical women by male physicians may have been economic.

In the last half of the nineteenth century, the medical profession was overstaffed and male physicians feared the doctoring ladies would steal away some of the profits, especially in obstetric cases.

Even after women had established the right to equal admission into medical school, other doors remained closed.

For a time hospitals did not accept women as staff members.

When they did, internships and residency appointments were denied. When those appointments were granted, the entrance of women into medical societies was denied. Because women had gained acceptance both into orthodox and sectarian schools, the women remained divided and without collective power until 1915 when the MedicalWomen's National Association, now the American Medical Women's

Association, was founded. In 1876 the American Medical

Association accepteda woman delegatefrom Illinois but most national organizations kept women from their ranks 76 until after World War I.

Shryock concludes that the very factor that made women's entry into medicine possible also stirred up intense opposition to it. That factor was the association of medical women with the strong feminist movement in America. That association, he concludes, "explains both the pioneer character of women's medical movement here" and, in both men and women, the "intense opposition which it encountered."

On a more individual level, Owens-Adair received much the same sort of opposition and criticism for her desire to study medicine. Just as unusual courage had been necessary to support women's suffrage, Owens-Adair wrote,

it required a brave woman . . . to declare her intention to study medicine. I, myself, studied in secret for several years. To do so openly made a woman the subject of public ridicule, and she was regarded as deserving of severe public criticism. There was scarcely a newspaper in the land that did not delight in holding her up as a "strong-minded nuisance," a"mannish woman" and such-like detestable expressions. How often has it been said, "No modest, or refined woman would study medicine."The doors of all medical schools were closed against her; but slurs and opposition only strengthened her desires, and, with an irresistable will and determination, she rose up in her strength and builded medical schools forherself.41 In her medical endeavors, as well as her reform activities, Owens-Adair characterized herself as driven with great courage toward success, despite intense opposition to her activities. Owens-Adair's interest in medicine began when she was 77

a milliner in Roseburg and spent many hours assisting

ailing neighbors. Looking back on her entry into the medical field she wrote: "I had always had a fondness for

nursing, and had developed such a special capacity in that

direction by assisting my neighbors in illness, that Iwas more and more besieged by the entreaties of my friends and

doctors, which were hard to refuse, to come to their aid

in sickness, oftentimes to the detriment of business . ,48

But her well-intentioned efforts, though appreciated by her neighbors, were not highly regarded by local male physicians.

Their scorn was apparently the factor that encouraged Owens- Adair to seek a formal medical education, as indicated by

this incident from Owens-Adair's days in Roseburg:

One evening I was sent for by a friend with a very sick child. The old physician in my presence attempted to use an instrument for the relief of the little sufferer, and, in his long,bungling, and unsuccessful attempt he severely lacerated the tender flesh of the poor little girl. At last, he laid down the instrument to wipe his glasses. I picked it up, saying, "Let me try, Doctor," and passed it with perfect ease, bringing immediate relief to the tortured child. The mother, who was standing by in agony at the sight of her child's mutilation, threw her arms around my neck, and sobbed out her thanks. Not so the doctor! He did not appreciate or approve of my interference, and he showed his displeasure at the time most emphatically. This apparently uu.. important incident really decided my future course.4.9 Owens-Adair borrowed a set of medical books from a friendly physician in Roseburg and began to study the fundamentals of anatomy, keeping her actions secret from family and friends. Finally, she turned her millinery 78 business over to a sister, sent her son to live with

Abigail Duniway, the suffragist editor of The New Northwest in Portland, and prepared to leave for medical school in

Philadelphia. The reaction to her plans from family and acquaintances was not favorable:

I expected disapproval from my friends and relatives, but I was not prepared for the storm of opposition that followed. My family felt that they were disgraced, and even my own child was influenced and encouraged to think that I was doing him an irreparable injury, by my course. People sneered and laughed derisively. Most of my friends seemed to consider it their Christian duty to advise against, and eg8eavor to prevent me taking this "fatal" step. Her friends seemed to think she was "stark crazy" to leave a good business and go off on a "wild goose chase" to medical school. They made it clear that while they would willingly seek her services as a milliner, they would never consider being treated by a woman doctor.

By the time she boarded the stage for Philadelphia, even Owens-Adair was having second thoughts about her actions: Eleven otclock p.m. arrived at last, and I found myself seated in the California overland stage, beginning my long journey across the continent. It was a dark and stormy night, and I was the only inside passenger. There was no one to divert my thoughts from myself, or prevent the full realization of the dreary and desolate sense that I was starting out into an untried world alone, with only my own unaided resources to carry me through. The full moment of what I had undertaken now rose before me, and all I had left behind tugged at my heart-strings. My crushed and over- wrought soul cried out for sympathy, and forced me to give vent to my pent-up feelings in a flood of tears, while the stage floundered on through mud and slush, and the rain came down in torrents, as 79 if sympathizing Nature were weepinga fitting accompaniment to my lonely, sorrowful mood. And now I had ample opportunity to reason and reflect. I remembered that every great trouble of my life had proveda blessing in disguise, and had broughtme renewed strength and courage . . . . I had taken thldecisive step, and I would never turn back.

This was one of only a few incidenceswhere Owens-Adair admitted to some fears and self-doubts.

Owens-Adair enrolled in the Philadelphia Eclectic

School of Medicine and graduated in 1874. While in Phil- adelphia she attended lectures and clinics at Blockly

Hospital, a common practice with medical students of the

city. She would recall later the inhospitable treatment of the women medical students: "a little band of brave and

earnest women were 'rotten-egged' at Blockly Hospital, in

broad daylight, in the old, staid city of Philadelphia. And for what was this done? Their crime was that they were trying to fit themselves for the practice of medicine to alleviate pain and suffering, and thereby earn for themselves honorableself-support."52

Owens-Adair's reception was no more cordial on her return to Roseburg as a new graduate of the Eclectic School of Medicine. The Roseburg doctor who had been so annoyed at Owens-Adair's "impudence" at the bedside of that sick little girl arranged what he thought would be a humiliating experience for the new doctor. He and five of Roseburg's leading physicians invited Owens-Adair to attend the autopsy 80 of a destitute male patient. To the male doctors' amusement, she accepted. Once present, she was informed that the autopsy was to be performed on the mants genitals and that she was to do the surgery herself. Her acceptance of the challenge caused quite a stiramong the Roseburg residents:

The news of what was going on had spread to every house in town, and the excitement was at fever- heat. When I had at last finished the dissection, the audience (not the doctors) gave me three cheers. As I passed out and down on my way home, the street was lined on both sides with men, women and children, all anxious to get a lookat "the woman who dared," to see what sort of a strange, anomalous being she was. The women were shocked and scandalized) The men were disgusted, but amused thinking it "such a good joke on the doctors." Years later, secure in her established, conventional medical practice, Owens-Adair reflected on the Roseburg incident: I wonder, as I look back now, that I was not tarred and feathered after that autopsyaffair: I can assure you it was no laughing matter then to break through the customs, the prejudicesand established rules of a new country, which is always a risky undertaking, especially if it is done by woman, whose position is so sharply defined.93 From Roseburg, Owens-Adair went to Portland where she set up her eclectic practice in a brick building on the east side of First Street, between Taylor and Yamhill. In her two-room suite, the doctor offered Portlanders "medicated vapor baths combined with electricity in treating rheumatism and chronic diseases." This new treatment 81 proved quite popular and in combination with her second specialty--the treatment of women's and children's afflictions, her practice was remunerative. However, she could only find one resident of Portland who was skilled in the operation of electrical batteries, so keeping the baths in running order proved to be a serious problem.

Her acceptance into the medical community of Portland was not immediate--she mentions "occasional rebuffs" and frequent slights" from her "brother M.D.'s."

However, business became so lucrative that she sent her son to the Medical Department of the Willamette University in Salem, from which he graduated two years later, fulfilling her "life's ambition." But her-son's success alone proved to be an insufficient reward. Owens-Adair indicated a dissatisfaction with her career as an eclectic practitioner: "Time passed on. I was successful and prosperous, but not yet satisfied. Again, I was beginning to pine for moreknowledge."54Meanwhile, the dean of the Eclectic Medical College was convicted of selling bogus degrees, and Owens-Adair became known as a "bath doctor" among the city's orthodox physicians. So, at the age of 38, Owens-Adair decided to return to a traditional medical school to get an orthodox, two-year medical degree. She set her sights on the prestigous

Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. 82

She arrived in Philadelphia armed with letters of recommendation from "U.S. Senators, Governors, Professors

and Doctors," hoping they would guarantee heradmission to the traditionally all-male school. In Philadelphia Owens- Adair visited Dr. Hannah Longshore,one of the first graduates of, the Woman's Medical School of Philadelphia.

Dr. Longshore described the admission situation at that time:

I have no faith that you can get into Jefferson College,(she told Owens-Adair.)but I want to see you try it. I believe the time will come when the doors of every medical school in our land will be forced to open for women, as do the Eclectic and Homeopathic schools now. But the old schools, as you know, do not recognize them. Owens-Adair pleadher case to a Professor Gross, the "greatest professor" at Jefferson College.With some apparent sadness, he told her that the board of regents of Jefferson College "would simply be shocked, scandalized, and enraged at the mere mention of admitting a woman." He suggested Owens-Adair attend the Woman's Medical School of Philadelphia, but she felt a woman's college was considered "below par" among medical professionals in the western states. She added, "I must have a degree that is second to none." Professor Gross suggested the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which at that time was already co-ed, and "second to none in America."55 Owens-Adair did enroll at the University of Michigan and for the next two years followed a rigorous course of 83

study. Each day began with a cold bath at 4a.m., rigorous excercises and study until breakfastat 7 a.m., then another

sixteen hours of lectures, labs,and study. Summing up

her stay at the University of Michigan,Owens-Adair wrote:

Between lectures, clinics, laboratorywork, Quizzes, examinations, two goodsermons on Sunday, and a church socialnow and then, the time was fully and pleasantly occupied. The constant change brought rest, and actedas a safety valve to our over-heated brains.56

With competitive pride she recounted thetime she bested her classmates by spending hervacation filling out a workbook on anatomy, "the bug-bear of medical students."

Evidently her professorwas impressed, as he told her: You have done that which no other student in this University hasever done before, and more than I expected one to do, and you.have done it while the others have been enjoying a vacation. I shall not forget this. It will be of the

highest value to you in . . . the fixing of these all-important facts in yourmemory.57 After receiving her orthodox M.D. degree from the

University of Michigan in June 1880, Owens-Adairjourneyed to Chicago where she was engaged in hospital and clinical work. After a post-graduate course at the Universityof Michigan, she sailed for Eugope, where she didnot hesitate to use her credentials to gain entry to medicalinstitutions.

"In all the large cities," she wrote, "wevisited the hospitals, and saw many of the world's greatestsurgeons operate. My letters with state seals always securedus open doors, and invitations to enter." 84 Those letters, from the president of theUniversity of Michigan and U.S. senators andgovernors, were useda final time on her return to New York whereshe convinceda rather dubious customs collector not tocharge a $75 dutyon medical instruments shehad purchasedin Paris. Owens-Adair found a more cordial receptionin Portland as a graduate of an accredited medicalschool than she had as a giver of medicated vapor baths. She wrote that shortly after her new offices wereopen for business, "My friends, and my enemies, as well--if they of theold slights and disapproval could so be called--came topay their respects, and many to receive my professional services. . 1158 During Owens-Adair's years as a medical student,and later in life, she wasclearly a supporter ofco-educational schooling and ofwomen's right toa scientific education. In 1880, as a student at the Universityof Michigan, she wrote a letter to the editor of the school's "DailyNews" rebutting an attackon the character ofwomen medical students. Her description of prevailing attitudes indicatesthe difficulties women medical studentsmust have encountered: How fortunate it isfor woman that prejudice and slanderare not conclusive againsther character. Whenever she stepsforward and modestly claims to beheard in the advancing studies of science,she is quite apt tobe rudely told that her influence in educational mattersis pernicious, and hercharacter about to beinjured if she persists in her effort. And why? Because by this course sheasserts in theory andprinciple that the world shouldaccord her in practice. We believe woman shouldhave a knowledge of the 85

science of medicine. She is the natural nurse and physician of the family, and is endowedwith a desire to know more and more of those principles which are essential to the happinessand usefulness of her sex. In her endeavors to become learned and useful in any science,especially the medical, shekeenly feels how greatly this prejudice adds to the sacrifices she must make to attain the desired position. Still she pushes onward and upward, and by a life of rectitude and professional success convinces the multitude that she, though a woman, and because she is a woman, is doubly entitled to praise and honor.59

Many years later, Owens-Adair would receivesome of that same praise, not only for being the firstwoman doctor on the Pacific coast to receive an M.D. degree, but for being the "first woman of the Pacific states who had the moral courage to enter a class of students in a medical college where men and women studied and practiced medicine together.,,60 Owens-Adair lived to see other women join her as western physicians and she lavished praise upon them in a speech delivered at a women's convention:

In asserting that woman is always ready for duty, and always yielding to its exactions, we believe we present her true character. Today the world beholds her, as she takes her stand upon the great field of science, while the flag of victory floats over her. Among the foremost ranks of this goodly array we find our pioneer lady physicians, whose lives have been purified and beautified, broadened and enobled by the strenuous battle that was required to be fought and won in order thatwomen as physicians might be considered even respectable. Today we honor and bless these noble mothers, bile the world looks on with a smile thatapproves.01 86

C. Temperance and Prohibition

Another nineteenth century reform campaign, this one attracting to its ranks women suffragists and people of the medical profession, was the one against intemperantuse of alcoholic beverages. Later, that movement supported prohibitive legislation regulating the sale and consumption of alcohol. On January 29, 1919 the temperance reformers were victorious: the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbade the manufacture, sale, transportation and import or export of intoxicating liqours for beverage purposes.

The "alcohol problem" was thought to have been present at least since the advent of formal civilization. As one author wrote, "Ancient man not only crazed drink but, speaking in the large, getting crazily drunken appeared to be his prime objective.,62

The modern temperance movement was started during the 1700s by medical doctors as a somewhat scientific campaign against alcoholism. Prior to this time there had been a traditional belief in the value of alcohol in treating disease, but as general health was distinguished from treatment of ailments, the temperance movement got underway. By 1820 the movement had been taken over by moral reformers and leaders of the clergy. They made temperance a social rather than scientific cause and with their emotionalism gave the movement a tenor alien to its original purpose.63

The firstmajor temperanceorganization,the American 87

Society for the Promotion of Temperance, was founded in

1826. By 1833 its membership had surpassed one million, with 6,000 chapters across the states. Another major organization, the National Woman's Christian Temperance

Union, was founded in 1874. In 1879 it became the first organization to support formal lessons in temperance for the nation's school children; every state eventually passed legislation making such education compulsory.

The need for national temperance organizations was pointed out in an 1874 temperance treatise. The author wrote that at that time there was only a "vague recognition" of the importance of temperance by the American people:

there is a deplorable apathy and indifference among the mass of the people with reference to the whole matter. With a want of consideration, and perhaps a want of knowledge, they are, in great measure, ignorant of the gigantic proportions intemperance is assuming in the land, and the impending danger, in consequence, to all the dearest and best interests of humankind.64 The author encouraged wider recognition of the liquor problem and promoted legislation to stop the flow of alcohol, before the intemperant foes of the government, living within America's borders, threatened the country's very freedom.65 Arthur Newsholme, a principal medical officer of the Local Government Board of England and a lecturer on public health at Johns Hopkins University wrote in 1922 a treatise called Prohibition in America: And Its Relation to the Problem of Public Control of Personal Conduct.66 88

In his work he concluded that the "National Prohibitionin America is the result ofa real national sentiment in its

favour on the part of a majorityof thepopulation."68

Newsholme named six factors that contributedto this prohibition sentiment.

The chief factor was what he called the "pertinacious propagandism" of the Anti-Saloon League in eachstate. The League, he wrote, while stopping "short of the militancy which in Britain was associated with thecollateral movement for Female Suffrage, is said to have cowedmany politicians into support of prohibition who would have preferrednot to give this support. There is no peculiarity in this yielding of politicians to pressure. They are usually astute enough to appreciate on which side lies the balance of public opinion. The degree of involvement of American women's rights supporters in the temperance movement varied between suffrage organizations. In fact, the subject caused considerable dispute among the suffrage leaders. While most suffragists privately favored temperance, they felt their public involvement in controversial temperance and prohibition activities would distract attention from their main purpose--to win the vote. It was thesame line of reasoning that led the early suffragists to seek the vote before participating in anti-liquor and anti-slavery campaigns. In any case, the support of those vocal 89 suffragists who did join the temperance movement no doubt drew public attention toward the cause, whether thesentiment was in favor or against.

In 1874, one temperance supporter eloquentlydescribed women's interest in temperance:

For years and years, and weary, suffering years, multiplied into decades, havethe women of America waited to see that traffic destroyed which annually sends sixty thousand of their sons, brothers, fathers, andhusbands into the drunkard's grave. They have been impoverished, disgraced, tortured in mind and body, beaten, murdered. Under the impulse of maddening liquors the hands that were pledged before Heaven to provide for and protect them have withdrawn from them the means of life, or smitten them in the dust. Sons whom they have nursed upon their bosoms with tenderest love and countless prayers, have grown into beasts, of whom they areafraid, or have sunk into helplessand pitiful slavery. They have been compelled to covertheir eyes with shame in the presence of fathers whomit would have been bliss for them to holdin honor. They have been compelled to bear childrento men whose habits had unfitted them forparentage--children not only tainted by disease, butendowed with debased appetites. They have seen themselves and their precious families thrust intosocial degra- dation, and cut off forever from alldesirable life by the vice of the men they loved. What the women of this country havesuffered from drunkeness, no mind, however sympathetic, canmeas6e, and no pen, however graphic, candescribe. It is clear that prose such as this couldeasily stir the hearts of women temperance reformers and inspirethem to press for prohibition legislation. Another factor that led to prohibition was a.measure

Owens-Adair supported, the compulsoryeducation of elementary school children in theeffects of alcohol abuse. 90

These educational programs, Newsholme wrote,"gradually formed a vast public opinion favourable to totalabstinence." Owens-Adair and Newsholme would have agreed on another point, that the nation's saloons contributed to dirtypolitics by harboring an "organized traffic" that "corrupts elections, debauches voters, debases many legislators and theirofficials." Theodore Roosevelt apparently held that view as well, having been quoted as saying "the American saloonhas been one of the most mischievous elements in American social,political and industriallife."71 A desire to rid the nation of its saloons and thereby guarantee "clean" politicsalso lent support to prohibition, the author concluded.

Other factors included a supposed "increasein industrial efficiency secured by abstinence," and,during World War I, a desire to "safeguardAmerican troops against the moral temptations to which alcoholic indulgenceoften forms the introduction." The southern states, Newsholmesaid, were motivated to adopt prohibition by the "negroproblem and especially the desire . . . to save white women from negroes inflamed bydrink."72 A major factor in the enforcement of prohibition, one that had "much weight with the thoughtful public" was a declaration made by the American Medical Association in

1917. That resolution read: Whereas, We believe that the use of alcohol as a beverage is detrimental to thehuman economy, and Whereas, its use in therapeutics, as atonic or a 91

stimulant or as a food has no scientific basis, therefore be it Resolved, That the American Medical Association opposes the use of alcohol as a beverage, and be it further Resolved, That the use of alcohol as a therapeutic agent should be discouraged.73 Newsholme also noted the "striking fact" that four out of five American physicians had "refrained from taking out permits to prescribealcohol.,'74 Owens-Adair first learned about the powers of alcohol in her childhood through the apparent misuse of the intoxicant by members of her family. She wrote that the

"common curse of humanity," alcohol, "crushed" her early life and "robbed my home and childhood of every vestige of beauty and sunshine." She also believed that the misuse of alcohol kept her from obtaining an early education: alcohol, she wrote, "permitted me to grow up in ignorance of the contents of even the primary school books; and not until I had reached womanhood, and had earned money by the hardest manual labor, did I have the opportunity of learning to read andwrite."75 In 1870, while a milliner in Roseburg, Owens-Adair's first articles written for publication were printed in local papers. Along with articles supporting women's suffrage, Owens-Adair launched a crusade in print for

temperance and prohibition. In an 1870 letter to the editor of the Pantagraph, she called prohibition the next major political issue, and explained her interst in it: 92

"I, being a woman, and like most women having tasted the bitter fruits of intemperance, more keenly feel the necessity of securing a strict prohibitory liquor law enacted to protect our fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, who have within themselves the power of self-protection against this felldestroyer."76 In this statement Owens-

Adair echoed the sentiments of most women involved with the temperance crusade. While the women who had suffered from the intemperance of their loved ones did not have the power of the vote,

Owens-Adair wrote that "they do wield a powerful influence."

She hoped that influence would be strong enough to stop the "accursed traffic" of "alcoholized men" through Oregon's cities and strangle the "national curse" of inebriety. Owens-Adair joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union and over the next three decades continued to use the press and public speaking engagements to promote the temperance cause. Owens-Adair viewed the WCTU as a "grand educational organization" whose ranks were filled with informed and concerned citizens, and trained and proficient field workers, all "willing to work for any measure that looks toward the restriction or abolition of alcohol, and all other sources of crime." She was proud to be associated with the WCTU, which, she said, along with other organizations including the Sons of Temperance, Woman Suffrage, 93

State Temperance Alliance, Young Men's Christian Association, and the National League was united behind the same goal:

the "advancement and elevation of humanity."

In support of the WCTU, Owens-Adair lectured before church groups, the Grand Lodge of Good Templars, the junior members of the WCTU known as the "Bands of Hope," and in

1886, while serving as Oregon's WCTU state chairman of Heredity and Hygiene, the 5,000 members of the State

Temperance Alliance. She felt her "very many essays and communications" written for the Oregonian and Prohibition

Star reached a primary reading audience of 35,000 even before reprinting in smaller newspapers across the state. Owens-Adair urged the people of Oregon to vote for

temperance legislation, and in 1886, she supported the

candidates of the Prohibition Party. She encouraged the work of Oregon's temperance children, and demanded compulsory classroom education for the nation's schoolchildren

in the "evils of alcohol," tobacco and narcotics. She continued to emphasize the importance of women inbringing

an end to intemperance, which sheconsidered to be an inherited or acquired bad habit that could be overcomewith

determined effort. In 1893, Owens-Adair fulfilled a long- time dream by attending a nationaltemperance convention, "the greatest WCTU convention in the world," but because

of the sudden death of her adopted daughter, she leftfor

home after only one day at the meeting. 94

After Owens-Adair received her medical education, her campaign against alcohol took on a more scientific flavor.

She began to draw a connection between heredity and the "bad habit" of intemperance, and spoke of the medical effects of alcohol both in the drinker and in his offspring.

She began to cite scientific authorities as being against the use of alcohol, and finally concluded that mostinmates of state institutions owed their accommodations to their misuse of alcohol. In an 1885 address before the WCTU, Owens-Adair discussed "habit in forming character" in an attempt to promote a "strong and healthy willpower"againstdegrading forces such as alcohol. She described habit as "the result of an internal, inherent principle that leads usto do easily, naturally, and often involuntarily, what we do often. Habit may be inherited or acquired. It may grow and develop through nurture and cultivation, until it becomes thecontrolling law and consumingpower of our whole being." Owens-Adair regarded habit as the "prime factor in

temperance reform." And she believed the alcoholic habit could be transmitted, through heredity,from one generation

to the next: We inherit from our parents our features, our physical and mental vigor, and evenmuch of our moral character, and often when one generation is skipped, these qualities will re-appear in the one following, or even later. 95 The vices of our forefathers,as well as their virtues, have subtracted from,or added to the strength of our brain andmuscle. The evil tendencies of our nature constitutea part of our heirlooms from the past.??

Owens-Adair's interest in the transmission,from one

generation to the next, of alcohol-causedeffects indicates

an early interest in the workings of heredity--andinterest

she would later apply to herworks on eugenics. It was in her early temperancecrusades that she determined that

alcohol was the most powerfulforce in the creation of harmful hereditary traits:

There is a marked tendency in nature to transmit all diseased conditions,--the actual diseasenot always being transmitted, buta pre-disposition, or tendency toward the actual disease. Alcohol is the most potent of all agents in establishing hereditary traits whichprove destructive to both mind and body. The keen, morbid desire for liquor which demands gratification atany cost, is known as "alcoholism," and is transmittedfrom the parent to the child, and thus thousands ofpersons are cursed with the drink craze, and such of these as do not fall by the wayside, are compelled to make it the great struggle of their lives to resist the cravings of this unappeasable monster. ?$

Owens-Adair recommended total abstinencefrom alcohol as the "only safe policy," saying that by drinkinga single glass of wine, "a manmay awaken a hereditary and dormant taste for drink which can never afterwardbe assuaged, and that may eventually grow to proportions where itwill be beyond his control."79While a taste for drink, once awakened,may cause"morbid qualities ofa mild. character" 96 in the parent, Owens-Adair believed the effect would be exaggerated in the offspring: "inebriety with its ordinary perversions in the parent may become idocy or insanity in the child, and moderate drinking in the father, creating an appetite which in him is controlled, may produce drunkeness in the son, or dipsomania in the son or grandson, which may be beyond all control.,8o

Owens-Adair felt that her medical education and work as a practicing physician gave her unique authority on the subject of alcohol. "I think few persons have had a better opportunity to study both sides of the question than myself," she wrote. Along with her personal introduction to alcohol abuse by family members; Owens-Adair wrote that she-had examined the "scientific" aspects of the problem as well: "my profession has given me every opportunity to study the 'other side'--the human side of this all-important question." As for the medical effects of alcohol, Owens-Adair wrote that physicians recognized alcoholism as a "malignant disease" requiring "radical treatment"--in this case, removal of the cause, alcohol. Alcoholism, or as she called it, the "disease of intemperance," had attacked the entire nation: Its poison is infused through our whole system, and is coursing in the veins of all classes of our people! It may almost be called a contagious disease, and when once contracted, it can be transmitted from generation to generation, 97

appearing in a thousand types, and forms. No family in all our broad land is free from its baneful curse. We see it in the pinched and contracted features of the innocent babe. We hear it in the moans and cries of its disturbed slumbers. We find it exhibited in the ill-humors and vicious acts of the young and old. It comes to us in the form of chorea and paralysis. We meet it daily in the variogl forms of hysteria and other nervous diseases. Owens-Adair was not alone in her feelings toward the abuse of alcohol. A United States Supreme Court Justice was said to have called alcoholic drink the "most 82 prolific source of insanity, pauperism, vice, and crime." A 1920 address on public health spelled out the dangers of alcohol:

Alcoholism is a potent enemy of the race. It is a great creator of avoidable poverty. It makes the bed ready for tuberculosis. It is a frequent excitant of exposure to the infection of venereal diseases; it swells the ranks of fatherless children, and of neglected infants; it helps to fill our prisons and our hospitals. Let it be admitted, if you like, that light wines and beers are pleasant, and in strict moderation with meals are beverages to which little or no harm can be traced; but heavier drinks and all non-medicinal spirit drinking are to be condemned; and the country which distinguishes itself by abolishing these drinks

will, other things being equal, . . . inevitably attain quickly an industrial and economic superiority over all c8u tries which continue to follow the older ways.3 Owens-Adair described alcohol as a poisonous stimulant that causes constriction of the blood vessels and shriveling of the flesh in frogs, and which causes obstructions in blood flow and ultimately paralysis or apoplexy in humans.

She thought that alcohol, once present in the human system, 98 had a particular affinity for brainand nervous tissue. "We know that the brain substance of heavydrinkers becomes hardened and contracted," she wrote,"and we have it asserted,

on good authority, thatthe brains of long-continueddrunkards who have died from the effects of alcohol, wereso saturated

with the spirits that it ignited whentouched with a 04 lighted match, The affinity of alcohol for thebrain cells resulted

in what Owens-Adair called "at leastfive" varieties of mental derangement, as well as criminalbehavior and insanity.

She felt that the whisky traffic furnishednine-tenths of

the inmates of penitentiaries, jails,and insane asylums.

"This is no wild assertion," she declared,"every lawyer

and every doctor of eminence andability knows that it is 85 true." She lamented that "could men,with one accord, consent to give up all excesses,and live temperately,-- which means a life of healthfulnessand holiness,--what a glorious change would be wrought. What a diminution of

disease, crime, and insanity. Though the reduction of misery and evil in this generationwould be so great, that

of the next would be vastlymore."86 In an 1885 newspaper article,Owens-Adair made a plea for prohibition legislation thatcontained some of the same sentiments she laterexpressed in campaigns for

eugenic legislation: 99

I ask, should parentsin their ignorancebe allowed to poison theblood of theirinnocent and helpless offspring? Should men andwomen be allowed to contract disease,and vicious habits, and with them propagate,and bring forth mental and physical monstrocitieswith which to land? curse our Should our governmenthave no will in these importantmatters? Must we forever be forced to build institutionswith iron bars and grated doors to protectsociety? No sir; We believe the timehas come whenour people shall be made'to realize and understand theimportance of these great questionswhich inv8}ve the life and well-beingof our nation. Though the pleas for prohibition by Owens-Adairand her temperance colleagues were successfulin 1919, their victory was short lived. On December 5, 1933,the twenty-first amendment to the U.S. Constitutionrepealed the eighteenth amendment,ending prohibition. 100

Chapter IV References lAileen Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920 (New York: Columbia University Press,

1965 , p.260.

2lbid., p.ix.

3CarrieChapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923)s p.4.

41bid.,p.7.

51bid., p.6.

6Ibid., p.7.

7TheNational American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), Victory How Women Won It.'(New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1940), p.8.

8Ibid.,p.98. 91bid.,p.100. 10Kraditor,Woman Suffrage Movement, p.258.

11NAWSA,Victory, p.100

12Ibid., p.101. 13Cattand Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, p.491.

14NAWSA,Victory, p.110. 151bid,.,p.102. 161bid., p.125.

171bid.- 18Ibid., p.104. 19Catt and Shuler, Woman Suffrage and Politics, P-490- 20Ibid., p.491.

210wens-Adair,Bethenia Angelina, Dr. Owens-Adair: Some of Her Life Ex eriences (Portland, Or.: Mann & Beach, 1922)2 p.56. 101

221bid., P58. 231bid., P.72.

24Aconcise biography of Abigail Scott Duniway is given by Eleanor Flexner in the preface of Duniway's

Path Breakin : An Autobiographical Historof the Equal Suffrage Movement in the Pacific Coast States James, Kern and Abbott, 191); reprint ed., New York, Schocken Books, 1971). 2SFlexner,Preface to Path Breaking by Duniway, p.xi.

260wens-Adair,Life Experiences, p.474

271bid. 281bid.,P478 29Duniway, Path Breaking, p.47 300wens-Adair, Life Experiences, p.360.

31Ibid., p.472.

32ldem. 3.3GertBrieger, ed., Medical American in the Nineteenth

Centur : Readings from the Literature (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), p.58. 34GertBrieger, "Health and Disease on the Western Frontier: A Bicentennial Appreciation," Western Journal of Medicine vo1.125 (July 1976), p.28-35.

35RichardShryock, Medicine and Society in America: 1660-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,1900), P145 361bid., p.144. 37Brieger, Medical American, p.87. 38Richard Shryock, "Women.in American Medicine," Journal of the American Medical Women'sAssociation vol.5 (1950)p.3 1. 391bid.,P.372. 102

40C.D. Meigs, Females and Their Diseases (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1648), cited by Shryock, Women in American Medicine," p.40

4lBarbaraEhrenreich, "Gender and Objectivityin Medi- cine," Journal of InternationalHealth Services, vol. 4, no. 4 (1974), p.618.

42JohnHaller, "Neurasthenia: The MedicalProfession and the.'New Woman' of Late NineteenthCentury," New York State Journal of Medicine (Feb. 15,1971) p.478. 43R. Coleman, Women's Relations to the Higher Education and Professions, As Viewed FromPhysiological and Other Standpoints (Alabama, 1669). cited theniap;479. by John Haller, Neuras-

44Shryock,Medicine and Society, p.147. 45Shryock,"Women in American Medicine," p.374. 461bid.

470wens-Adair,Life Experiences, P-411-

48Ibid.p p.79.

491bid.

50Ibid...p.80.

5lIbid.,p.82.

52Ibid.$p.411. 531bid., p.84, 97. 541bid.,p.88.

551bid.,p.91.

561bid.,p.92. 571bid.

581bid.,p.97. 591bid.,P370 60Ibid., p.431. 103 61 Ibid., p.373. 62Marion Edward Stone, American Liquor Control (Boston: The Christopher Publishing House, 1943), P-36

63 Shryock, Medicine and Society, p.122.

64L. Stebbins, FiftYears of the Temperance Cause (Hartford, Conn.: J. P. Fitch, 1 , P-3. 651bid., 28. 66Arthur Newsholme, Prohibition in America: And Its Relation to the Problem of Public Control of Personal Conduct (London: P. S. King & Son, Ltd., 1922).

68Newsholme, Prohibition, p.26.

691bid.

70Stebbins,Temperance Cause, p.299.

71Newsholme,Prohibition, p.27-

72Ibid., p.29.

731bid.,p.28.

741bid.,P.35.

750wens-Adair,Life Experiences, p.438. 76Ibid.,P364 771bid., P. 427.

781bid.

791bid.,p.462. 80Ibid.,P454. 8llbid., P.422.

82Newsholme, Prohibition, p.37.

831bid.,P.39. 104

840wens-Adair, Life Experiences, p.423.

851bid.,P453. 861bid., P428. 871bid.,p.454 105

V. MEDICINE AND EUGENICS: OWENS-ADAIR'S OREGON EUGENIC STERILIZATION CAMPAIGN

At the turn of the twentieth century, the so-called

"scientific era" of medicine had begun,, and the medical profession was becoming more prestigious and influential. Medical research at the time was aimed at controlling in- fectious diseases; tuberculosis and pneumonia were the nation's leading causes of death in 1900 and influenza and enteritis were major problems. Research and efforts to improve public and private hygiene were focused on environmental causes of disease, and bacteriology, toxicology, and parisitology became established fields.

Partly because of the emphasis on environmental causes of disease, research on human genetics was largely ignored by the medical profession. In addition, many genetic diseases werenot recognized since at that time, the carrier often died from infection or environmental factors before the genetic disorder was expressed. This added to the popular view that hereditary illnesses were rare. Those physicians who did recognize the role of genetics in medical problems took a fatalistic attitude--that surgery in particular and modern medicine in general were incapableof helping patients with geneticdiseases.' As a result, most physicians who did study human genetics did so as a hobby. Since human and clinical gene- 106 tics were not considered branches of medical science, the subjects were not covered in medical textbooks until 1940.

Some American medical colleges included brief study of Mendel's laws as a part of anatomy and embryology curriculum.

But until 1933, no American medical college offered required courses in genetics.2

The few physicians doing research in heredity deplored

"the apparent apathy of medical men with regard to the problems of inheritance" and "the sluggishness of our clinics as far as efforts to apply the newer knowledge and techniques to the solution of the problems of health and disease in man.113 Other researchers were dismayed at how little the nation's medical students learned of heredity, and how little they added to their knowledge as practicing clini- cians: "Medical students are fortunate if they pick up a rudimentary knowledge of Mendel's law during their premed- ical course. In the later grind of regular medical instruc- tion they will probably have few opportunitiesto make good theirdeficiencies, evenif they should appreciate the importance of sodoing."4 The lack of knowledge and interest in genetics on the part of American physicians was particularly ironic because

America was the world leader in genetic research at that time. American geneticists made important gains in the field prior to 1930 andsomeof that information was 107 available to the public in popular readingform.5 But many physicians were convinced that emphasis on heredity would make their therapeutic services unnecessary.

One human geneticist wrote: I think a problem that we shouldsometimes discuss is assuring the general public, physicians and educators that the mere fact of our establishing a genetic background for a condition does not eliminate the hope of therapy or training as a method of modifying that'character. I run into it all the time. The lack of cooperation of many groups with geneticists is largely the fear that if we establish a genetic basis, physicians and educators are not going to be able to use therapy or education or psychology or some other means of improvingattitudes, education,and disease. Clearly, then, physicians diagnosed andtreated patients with little knowledge of genetic disorders. And yet, the physicians who became involved in theeugenics movement hastened to label a host of ailments as"hereditary."

And they did so with nearly no understandingof the mechanismsthat might have caused such medicalproblems. Although physicians did not receivegenetic training prior to 1933 and most did not considerresearch in human genetics important, many medical personnelwere interested

in the applicationof geneticsthrough eugenics. Repre- sentatives of several medical societiesattended the

InternationalCongressof Eugenics in 1912,and a segment of that meeting considered therelationship between medicine and eugenics.Six physicians served as vice presidents of the Congress and sevenserved on the 108

scientific board of directors of the Eugenics Records Office, and medical doctors served in other eugenicsocieties. Charles Davenport lectured before medical societies on eugenics and human genetics, and formed several subcommittees of the Eugenics Committee of the American Breeders' Association to investigate various medical conditions. However, this temporary link between medicineand eugenics did not stimulate physicians' interest in human heredity.

Rather, it appeared that physicians were attracted to eugenics as a socialmovement,not as ascience.? By the time the Second International Congress of Eugenics was convened in 1921 the link between medicine and eugenics had broken. Eugenists criticized the physicians for ignoring the well-being of futuregenerations by allowing the weak of the current generation to survive through medical therapy. Some eugenists suggested that physicians should not heal the sick but rather judge who was fit to reproduce. The attitude of theeugenists turned physiciansawayfrom eugenics, which reinforced the idea that medicine could not help cure hereditary disease,8 Like geneticists, physicians had a few brief ties witheugenicsbut did not, in the end, embracethe cause. Geneticistswere concernedmore with unveiling the mech- anismsof heredity than with the application of hereditary 109

and evolutionary theory to man. They were concerned with

the shallow research being conductedin human genetics that was passed off as science. In turn, physicians thought

hereditary diseasesrare and could not see a clinical use

for genetics. They adopted a fatalism toward the problem

of inherited disease. The attitudes of both geneticists

and physicians kept eugenics from establishinga scientific basis.9

According to Owens-Adair, her interest in eugenics

began in the late 1880s when she had occasionto tour a "pitifuland loathsome ward" in an Oregon state asylum with the institution's superintendent.At that time Owens-Adair told the superintendent that the "poor, miserable creatures" who were inmates there should be sterilizedas their "only chance for their safety."The superintendent reacted with "perfect amazement" at Owens-Adairls opinions and told her not to make her shocking viewpoints public.She indicated then that she would begin her fight for sterilization when the time was right:"I hope the time willcome when I will be permitted to use my pen andmy voice in this direction for the purification and preservation ofournation.1"10 She got that chance after her retirement fromactive medical practice in 1905 when she took hercrusade for eugenic reform to the press and lateras shecampaigned for passageof sterilization legislation. This 1908 entreaty to her Portland supporters indicates Owens-Adair'saware- 110 ness of the power of the press in bringing nationwide support to the eugenics movement:

Two years ago I called upon the Legislature through the columns of the Oregonian to enacta law to prevent propagation, through sterilization of criminals, idiots, insane and all that class of defectiveness. From the prominence given my communication by the Oregonian the subject was taken up by the Washington press and also by Eastern papers. I went to the Legislature and succeeded in getting a bill introduced in the House, which I consider a great step in advance, and now my co-workers, I ask your assistance. Give me your counsel, go with me to Salem. Use your pens and study the subject. The press will stand behind us. The newspapers are the great educators of the people. The pen is mightier than the sword. The great dailies, the weeklies and monthlies that are sent out by the tens of thousands are the creations of the best, deepest thoughts of great minds that have been made great-by constant thought and application.

No doubt Owens-Adair had come by her high opinion of the press as a vehicle for social reform through her years of experience writing in support of suffrage and temperance. Many of Owens-Adair's supporters took her advice and penned articles and letters-to-the-editors of newspapers across the state, declaring their support of eugenic ideals. Owens-Adair was particularly impressed by an article written by a physician, whose ideas perfectly reflected

Owens-Adair's own reasoning. He wrote: I insist that I am entitled to certain inaleinable rights of birth, due to me from that generation which preceded and brought me into existence. I am the innocent product of that part of human society; and upon them devolved the responsibility of giving me all possible advantages to wage the battle of life successfully. I am entitled to a sound body, untainted by ills 111

sinfully contracted by my progenitors. I am entitled to a clear intellect, undimmed by reason of alcoholic and toxic drug addiction on the part of those who incidentally or intentionally procreated my brain. I am entitled to natural tendencies toward that which is uplifting to the human race, unim- peded by degenerative habits wrongfully contracted by any one instrumental in my advent. I am entitled to parents who are not degrading to me by reason of being criminals hampering my progrel toward high ideals by unmerited disgrace.

To achieve this birthright for every human being,

Owens-Adair believed that restricting "procreation by the unfit" was the "only practical remedy." The method of restriction she proposed, of course, was sterilization of

all those unfit to produce children. She believed

sterilizationwas ajustifiable "social remedy" because of

the laws of heredity. She wrote that since the late 1880s she had believed "that the power of transmission from parent to child, is a law which holds good through all life and dates back from the beginning of time, 'Like 12 begets like'from which thereis no escaping." The laws of heredity that she once used to explain the transmission of defects caused by alcohol, Owens-Adair now applied to all defects--physical, mental, andsocial-- in her discussions of eugenics. To underscore her premise that sterilization was justifiable by the science of heredity, Owens-Adair began her,argument with a definition taken from a turn-of-the-century edition of Webster's dictionary: "Heredity--The transmission of the physical 112

and psychical qualities of parentsto their offspring; the

biological law by which livingbeings tend to repeat themselves in their descendants."

This concept of hereditywas an integral part of her plan for sterilization of the unfit. Her major arguments

for eugenic sterilizationwere based upon the four basic principles listed below:

1. That heredity plays a most important part in the transmission of feeble-mindedness, imbecility, idocy, epilepsy, insanity, and criminal tendencies. 2. That the increase of defectives and degenerates to be supported by normal people is an economic and social problem which demands solution. 3. That colonization of the unfit and feeble-minded cannot alone solve the problem. 4. That it is impossible to preclude all possibility of sexual intercourse among these classes.13

Owens-Adair declared that these four principleswere not only true, but "generally accepted by thoughtful people as well as social workers and scientific investigators."

Indeed, Owens-Adair seemed to be reflecting the nationwide current of eugenic thought. In her writings she made reference to the work of several prominenteugenists including Richard Dugdale, Henry Herbert Goddard,Charles

Davenport, David Starr Jordan, Paul Popenoe, and Mrs.E. H. Harriman. But despite the apparent agreement of her eugenic ideals with those of the experts, a general acceptanceof

Owens-Adair's sterilization doctrines wouldseem to pre- suppose that her supporters had a working knowledge of the 113 mechanisms of heredity. However, Owens-Adair never treated the subject of heredity in other than a very superficial manner. Instead, she left the burden of proof of the

validity of "heredity" to others:

I shall not attempt a discussion of the laws of heredity but shall assume an acceptance of them. That mental defects and criminal tendencies are transmissible has been forcibly established by scientific investigators. There is a great quantity of statistical evidence proving this fact. Studies have been made of the genealogies of many different families, good and bad, and the results given the world.4 It would appear, then, that Owens-Adair's supporters likely took her applications of heredity on faith. Since

even the best educated physicianswerenearly ignorant

on the subject of heredity, itis unlikely that Owens-Adair's

less educated supporters would havea greaterunderstanding

of the science. Any exposure to heredity they got beyond Owens-Adair's writings probably came from the popularized works written by the nation's leadingeugenists. Prime examples of such widely read accounts were the

onesOwens-Adair cited in support of the idea that undesirable qualities are inherited. They were the well known case histories of the Jukes family, compiled in 1874 by Richard Dugdale, and the Kallikak family, published

in 1913 by Henry Herbert Goddard. From thesestudies, Owens-Adair concluded, "the trail offeeble-minded is

inevitablytransmissible."15

Without any documentation that went beyond pure 114 circumstantial evidence, Owens-Adair declared that based on these genealogies it was clear the "feeble-mindedness may in any generation turn into idocy, insanity orciminality" and that although a certain defect may not be present in every member of a family, each "carries thedefect in his blood and may give a subnormal child even more defective than its defective ancestors." It appears that Owens-Adair was no morediscerning than other eugenists of her time and the largepublic sector that became convinced of the menace of thefeebleminded.

Owens-Adair did include in her writings acriticism of the early genealogies. The critic, himself a physician, was quoted by Owens-Adair as finding faultwith the Jukes family study. That study might justifiablyhave been criticized for its lack of objectivity orscientific authenti- city. But, echoing the hereditariansentiments of Owens- Adair and society at that time,the critic chastized Richard Dugdale for crediting muchof the Jukes family traits to the environment rather thanheredity; it is a curious fact that Mr.Dugdale, the historian, attributed thisremarkable history not to heredity alone, butalso to the environment in which thesepeople lived. He was not aware of the fact thatenviron- ment doe16not as a rule affectheredity in any way. This writer contrasted the badheredity of the Jukes with

the family tree of Jonathan Edwards,"the most eminent- 115

theologian America has produced." Of the 1,400 descendants of Jonathan Edwards who were recorded, each was shown to be a "respectable, self-supporting citizen," including the

apparent black sheep of the family, Aaron Burr. The Jukes and Edwards families were shown to be the "most wonderful

contrast" on record, showing the'indelible, ineffaceable

influence of the primary stress of heredity."17

To compliment the nationally known genealogies of the Jukes and Kallikak families, Owens-Adair gave a local

example of the chain of feeblemindedness, in a family of her own acquaintance:

In the early days in the West I knew what was then called "a simple-minded" man who married a normal girl of fourteen. They had a normal child, a girl. That girl married a normal man and had eight children, all more or less defective, except one girl who appeared to be normal. She married a normal man. They had one child far more feeble-minded than its great grandfather. That child is a ward of the state. The eugeni- cists hav18definitely established theories bearing this out. Perhaps to hide the fact that her sampling of only one family certainly was not adequate to support the conclusions Owens-Adair was making, she added this clever afterthought: "I give this specific instance as I think it may be more impressive than general statements of the principle

involved. There are many other cases just as convincing

as this one."19If there were, Owens-Adair failed to mention them. 116

Owens-Adair supported the national organization that promoted the importance of heredity in the manifestation

of defective traits, the American Eugenics Association.

She also lent her support to the work of the Eugenics

Records Office at Cold Spring Harbor, the institution that

collected the genealogies so influential in the wave of hereditarian thought. In her writings on human sterilization, Owens-Adair acknowledged the admirable goals of the

Eugenics Records Office, which were "To promote researches in eugenics that shall be of utility to the human race; The study of the origin of, and best methods of restricting, the strains that produce the defective and delinquentclasses of communities; and To publish the result of these researches."

Owens-Adair seemed willing to leave research in eugenics to the experts at Cold Spring Harbor and limited her efforts to promoting their findings and conclusions--that the unfit classes of humanity should be sterilized. Owens-Adair seemed to adminre greatly Mrs. E. H. Harri- man, wife of a wealthy railroad magnate and benefactress of the Eugenics Record Office. Owens-Adair called Harriman one of the "leading apostles" of Americaneugenics. Owens- Adair praised Harriman's action in 1915, when, in a much publicized speech, Harriman asked "What is the matter with the American people? 15,000,000 must be sterilized!" Harri- man then set aside funds to do just that.Her financial contributions to the sterilization campaign were augmented 117

by those of John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) and Andrew

Carnegie (1835-1919).

Owens-Adair reprinted press accounts of the "gigantic

eugenic enterprise" led by Harriman and supported bya number of scientists involved in the "great Eugenic

Association."As she named them, those scientists included:

Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, scientist and philanthropist, chairman; Dr. William Welch, pathologist of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, vice chairman; Dr. L. F. Barker of Johns Hopkins, and president of the National Commission for Mental Hygiene; Dr. T. H. Morgan, zoologist of New York; Irving Fisher, professor of political economy at Yale, and Dr. E. E. Southard, the famous pathologist of Boston. The secretary of the board and resident director is Dr. Chas. B. Davenport, the New York biologist. H. H. Laughlin is superintendent and Prof. Howard J. Banker, noted botanist of Depauw University, has been installed as scientific expert.20 Owens-Adairts eugenic work on the west coast seemed to her

just a logical extension of east coast work being done by some of the nation's leading scientists.

As they launched their sterilization campaign in 1915, the members of the eugenics society determined that the sterilization of 92,400 Americans was necessary that year. They predicted that by 1980, 415,000 Americans would be

sterilized annually. "When that time arrive," the press accounts read, "there will have developed, the committee believes, a practically perfect manhood andwomanhood."21

The achievement of perfection, a lofty goal worthy of some admiration, if only for the enormity of the task, was 118 nevertheless a hopeless cause. For the way in which the committee proposed to achieve perfection went way beyond the bounds of scientific reason. For Harriman, the woman whose money made possible the start of this sterilization campaign, Owens-Adair had nothing but high praise. She admired Harrimants boldness in openly stating her beliefs although they shocked and surprised many of her listeners. But Owens-Adair believed

Harriman's rash statements on sterilization were well founded and that the American people would eventually come around and endorse Harriman's policies:

the people of today are thinking. And when the people think, they will act. And when they act, it will be for the preservation of the Nation! I firmly believe that within ten years we will have a National law governing 2he reproduction of our future generations.

The work.of the national eugenists indicated to Owens-Adair that "the perpetuation of the nation depends upon the cutting off of the propagationof the unfit." The point that Owens-Adair wanted to bring home to her Oregon readers was that "sterilization is the most humaneremedy ever discovered for stoppingthat propagation. Sterilization, she wrote, "protects the unbornchild, the degenerate, and the public at large. The subnormal will receive more 23 freedom and benefit than from anyother known plan."

Rather than viewing compulsory sterilization asthe ultimate infringement on individual rights, Owens-Adairconsidered 119 it a painless, even kind way to end the massive suffering caused by genetic defects. To show the specific need for sterilization in Oregon, Owens-Adair included in her writings the results of two surveys of the feebleminded in that state. The first set of statistics was compiled in 1916 by Glenn R. Johnson, a

Reed College professor. Johnson defined "feeble-mindedness" as a "teen that has been used to designate alldegrees of mental defectiveness, from the one who is merely dull and unable to learn fast to the one who is a gelatinous mass that simply lives and eats."He referred to 1913 World Almanac figures that indicated there were20,755 institutionalized feebleminded people in this country. According

to Johnson, Henry Goddard had estimated that there were

then between 150,000 and 300,000 mentallydefective people

in the country receiving no care. Despite these impressive

national figures, Johnson estimated thatthere were only 1,820 defectives in Oregon's population. "Oregon is yet

young," Johnson wrote. "It has few old settled communities. Consequently, there are probably fewerfeeble-minded people here in proportion to the populationthan there are in

the Atlantic states. But, when Oregon grows older we will have to face the same condition thatthe older states are

now facing." To combat feeble-mindedness in Oregon, Johnson recommended "proper marriage laws,segregation of

defectives, sterilization, negativeeugenics," and most 120

important, a collection of the "facts." To compile the facts on the number of feebleminded in Oregon, Johnson

asked that "anyone who reads this article and knows of any

feeble-minded person or defective in the State of Oregon who is not in some institution purposively used for the ,24 feeble-minded, to communicate the facts tome. Apparently those statistics were recorded without proof of the "feeblemindedness" of the individuals involved.

Only five years later, another survey conducted by the U. S. Public Health Service at the request of the Oregon State Legislature, showed that there were 65,243 feebleminded persons in Oregon, according to Owens-Adair's interpretation of the survey's results. She concluded that "the birth control of this great army of subnormal and degenerates is the greatest question of the age, for it means life or death for our nation."

Another account of this same survey dropped the estimated number of "mental defective, delinquentsor dependents" in Oregon to 29,847. But even this reduced figure meant that "nearly 4 per cent of Oregon's population is subnormal.

Counting the insane and mental defective only, of whichwe have 7686, this gives us a ratio of almost 10 per 1000 of population."26

Owens-Adair used this 1920 "Oregon Survey of Social

Liabilities" to make a strong argument for the economics of sterilization. Evidently she felt. this was her most power- 121 ful argument in support of sterilization legislationin

Oregon; while she pointed out that "the reductionof taxes is not the highest aim in this matter," she admittedit was "the appeal that will bring the earliest response."27

Taking full advantage of the appeal of economicarguments, Owens-Adair predicted that themore than 65,000 Oregonians of,"undergrade" were destined to become "a publiccharge at the expense of the taxpayers." Appealing to the frugal characteristics of her supporters she stated that in 1920, Oregon taxpayers contributed $1 million to the maintenance of six state-supported institutions: the feeble-minded school, state insane asylum, Eastern Oregon insane asylum, industrial school for girls, boys' training school, and penitentiary. She also noted that the state legislature had allocated another $1 million to finance building repairs, equipment, and purchase of additional lands. And yet, in spite of the funds allocated to maintain institutions for the "defective and degenerate," she wrote that the "number to be cared for grows faster than the accomodations." She concluded by asking her readers a`rhetorical question:

"Shall we ask the normal people ofour state, in addition to supporting themselves, to carry the burden of maintaining a disproportionate and ever increasing number of defectives ,28 and degenerates? Admittedly, her most effective arguments concerned the financing of care for the feebleminded.

The nation's leading advocate for making birth control 122

available to the general public, MargaretSanger (1883-1966) was as impressed with Oregon'ssurvey of mental degectives

as Owens-Adair seemed to be. Sanger supported "negative

eugenics," the control of propagationof the unfit. She did not, however, support "positiveeugenics," which

encouraged the nation's "fit"classes to reproduce at a

high rate. Sanger had high praise.for Oregon's 1922 survey:

The Mental Survey of the Stateof Oregon, recently published by the United StatesHealth Service, sets an excellent exampleand should be followed by every state in theUnion and every civilized country as well. It is greatly to the credit of the Western State that it isone of the first officially to recognize the primary importance of this problem and to realizethe facts, no matter how fatal to self-satisfaction, must be faced.

Sanger wrote that thesurvey indicated only a small proportion of the nation's "mental defectivesand morons" were institutionalized. The rest, she said:

are widely scattered and their condition unknownor neglected. They are docile and submissive. They do not attract attention to themselvesas do the criminal delinquents and the insane. Never- theless, it is estimated that they numberno less than 75,000 men, women, and children,out of a total population of 783,000,or about ten per cent. Oregon, it is thought, isno exception to other states. Yet under our present conditions, these people are actually encouraged increase and multiply and replenish the earth.28

Using the same argument Owens-Adair foundso effective,

Sanger noted that Oregon's survey pointed out thefinancial burden placed on the states by mental defectives. Sanger encouraged Oregon's legislators to devisea program to 123

reduce this loss and restore Oregon'sdefectives to "lives of industrial usefulness." She warned that mental defect

could be found anywhere and hopedother states would follow Oregon's lead:

It will be interesting tosee how many of our State Legislatures have the intelligenceand the courage to follow in thefootsteps of Oregon . But we should makesure in all such surveys, that mental defect is notconcealed even in such dignified bodiesas state legislatures and among those leaders who are urgingmen and women to reckless and irresponsible procreation.29

In this statement, Sagner.madeclear that she differed

from the eugenists who encouragedbreeding among the upper

classes to combat the threatening "fertilityof the feeble minded."

Owens-Adair, however, felt that the "birthcontrol" of the defective Oregonianswas particularly important

because of their "amazing fertility." She stated that the existing state institutionswere not adequate for the large number of blind, deaf, anddumb people, paupers, criminals,

and the insane and feebleminded. The irony of the situation,

asOwens-Adair saw it, was that while taxpayerssupported

the institutions to house the "unfortunates,"no effort was made to "get at the cause and stop propagation oftheir kind."30

To promote legislation to stop this propagation,

Owens-Adair constructed an elaborate argumentin favor of sterilization legislation. As her openingpoint, she declared any method of eliminating reproduction of defectives beside 124 sterilization was "ineffectual." Her reasoning was related to her hereditarian outlook; feeblemindedness was, she said, without a doubt "congenital, organic, and incurable, as well as transmissible." And, since "degeneracy is the result of something utterly lacking in the mental or moral make-up of an individual," it was "not something to be cured by prayer, by any method of medical treatment, system of education, by segregation, or by giving them wholesome and normal environs." By this reasoning, Owens-Adair concluded that sterilization of degenerates was the only method known "by which the river of life may bepurified."31

In preparation for her argument supporting eugenic sterilization legislation, Owens-Adair described the sterilization operations available at the time: vasectomy, salpingectomy, and castration. She described vasectomy as a simple "office operation" that did not inconvenience the subject or keep, him from returning to work immediately. The operation, she wrote, would cause neither mental nor nervous disturbances, and insomecases, might even have a "salutary effect" on the subject. She did mention that some criticisms had been levelled against vasectomy--that with the "danger of child bearing" removed, the subject might become more licentious. Owens- Adair acknowledged the validity of this objection, but discounted it: "The irresponsible class of people coming 125 within the purview of a sterilization law are not deterred from sexual indulgence by any fear of the consequences of their acts. Besides their acts are not of first importance.

It is their unborn children that alarmus."32

Owens-Adair characterized salpingectomy, or tubal li- gation, as almost as easy and certainly as effective as vasectomy. However, she admitted that castration of sexual perverts and habitual criminals was a more complicated issue, both legally and morally. But she still supported castration as a eugenical measure: "I do not think . . . that castration, even if it were thought of as a punishment, is a punishment disproportionate to the crimes of rapists and sodomists. It is not to be used as a punishment but to save society and to save the degenerates fromthemselves."33

Owens-Adair seemed to believe that any method, short of death, of controlling reproduction of degenerates, was acceptable regardless of the consequences: "My doctrine is that we must stop the birth of the potential degenerates and defectives, no difference whose personal rights may be invaded, to rid society of the ever increasing burden, and the ever increasing danger ofdestruction."34 After relating that prison officials had noticed a "wonderful improvement wrought in bad men after castration,"

Owens-Adair stated there was no need to obtain the consent of sexual perverts or rapists before castration, because 126

the public should not "worship the organs ofsex to such an

extent that we foster and maintain by taxationa small hell

for these people in state prisons." Owens-Adair also men-

tioned the objection made by "some authorities" tocastration--

that it caused severe mental andnervous disturbance in the subject. But, again, she discounted the importance of

this argument: "even if there isa somewhat serious disturbance, the end gained is surely worth the risk. That there is a change in the eunuch is not important when theorgans of reproduction made him a brute and a degenerate.r"35

In addressing the propriety of using sterilization as a social remedy, Owens-Adair named four basic categories of constitutional objections to sterilization made by the courts and the "most brilliant exponents of the legal profession." These lawmen said that if sterilization were. used as a punishment it would be considered cruel, inhuman, or unusual punishment. If sterilization measures were limited to people confined to state institutions, it would be considered a class action and would deny equal protection under the law. If the person to be sterilized were not given an opportunity for a hearing and if defense were not provided, it would constitute viola.tion.of the constitution, which guarantees that no one be denied life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Finally, state-sponsored sterilization legislation was thought to violate the sections of the federal constitution that guarantee that no ex-post-facto 127 law shall be passed and that no state shall pass a bill of attainder.

Owens-Adair found these objections invalid. In answer to the charge that sterilization of wards of the state con- stituted class action, Owens-Adair responded: "Legislation affecting persons under public restraint and not those outside would seem to be a reasonable distinction and based upon a natural principle of public policy, and, therefore, should be sustained as a reasonable exercise of the police power."36 As for sterilization interfering with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Owens-Adair wrote: "The person who has been sterilized is just as capable of the pursuit of happiness as the many happy and useful normal people who do not have children. Or those who have been sterilized as a medicalnecessity."37 Owens-Adair wrote that the objection most often mentioned by lawyers was that sterilization constitutes an invasion of personal rights. To counter this, Owens-Adair pointed out that "for the protection of the stateagainst the birth of undesirable children the legislatures of many states prohibit the marriage ofwhite personsand negroes; they have also prohibited the marraige ofepileptics under the age offorty-five."38-The courts also upheld the restriction of working hours for women because as"healthy 128

mothers are essentialto vigorous offspring,the physical well-being of a woman is an object of publicinterest," and laws regulating marriage between cousins,"which have for their foundation the prevention ofundesirable children."39 Therefore, since personal rights had alreadybeen legally

invaded for otherpurposes, Owens-Adair feltan extension

of this invasion foreugenic reasons wouldnot be objectionable. Owens-Adair seemeda bit frustrated that legislators would approve some restrictive laws suchas the ones just mentioned, but disapprove of sterilization legislation.She explained the apparentcontradiction: "The legal brethren are sometimes a little hazyas to whether the so-called

violation of the constitutionis a deprivation of lifeor liberty but they usuallysucceed in talking-themselves into

a compromise between the two with'property' thrown in for good measure."40

Owens-Adair madesome recommendations regarding the

due process of law question. She stated that the peopleto be sterilized wouldhave their right to dueprocess fully protected by delegating that authority to the Boardof Health, Board of Eugenics,or another "competent board." Objections to delegating such authorityto boards and commissions

started, she wrote, "withthe false assumption thatthe members of these boardswill be irresponsible,ignorant, or incompetent, if not positivelybrutal and vicious."

But she reminded herreaders that in allcases where life- 129 and-death decisions are made by juries, the administration of all laws is left to"mere men."

On the subject of appeal, Owens-Adair recommended a full hearing: it is advisable to grant the subject the right of a hearing before the board passing on him, and to carefully safeguard his rights by providing for an appealto the courts of the state, where he may have an opportunity to have his day in court, to face his accusers, and have a jury trial. There mustalsobe provision for the next of kin, guardians, etc., to act for those prevented from making such objectionsand appeal because ofphysical disability,as in the case of idiotsor insane persons. If the subject doeplnot have fundsthe state should appointcounsel.

Because she recommended these legislative proceedings, Owens-Adair argued that the bill of attainder argument against sterilization would never be valid.On the ex-post- facto argument she quoted a decisionexplaining why sterilization legislationin Iowa wasnot considered ex-post-facto legislation: "He (the subject) is not being subjected to the operation for that whichwas doneprior to theenactment of the statute, but because he voluntarily brings himself withina class coveredby thestatute.42 In these and several "miscellaneous objections" to sterilization considered and rebutted by Owens-Adair she seemsto take a dim view of her opposition. She does not often concede that these protesters may havehad some valid reservationstoward her sterilizationproposals. 130

that Owens-Adair Another objectionto sterilization of individuals countered was the onesaying that sterilization To will not eradicatedegeneracy andcrime completely. be cast aside for this she replied,"Surely it is not to this reason if it is astep in the rightdirection." In proof that trans- discussing the objectionthat there was no drew a mission of heredity wasinevitable, Owens-Adair distinction between theinheritance of traitscausing causing crimes statutory criminalityand those traits

involving morality: One of the argumentsI have oftenheard against theinevitability of thetransmission and the fact that of a taint of degeneracy colonies (notably like begets like,is that the Australia) which havebeen settled bycriminals, of good, law-abidingpeople. have become states against This is, of course, noargument at all heredity, for the functioningof the laws of colonists wereundoubtedly very these outlaw involving, largely guilty ofstatutory crimes, of moral turpitude.43 perhaps, absolutelyno degree a "habit" Owens-Adair noted thatlawyers had developed not stop crime. The of arguing thatsterilization will Henry VIII lawyers, shesaid, often citedthe case of King but did notsucceed in who hung 72,000people for vagrancy that Henry VIII stamping out crime. Owens-Adair argued and a degeneratehimself." But, was"unjust, malicious, sterilized 72,000idiots and she wrote,"ifHenry VIII had been a casein point congenital criminals,it would have and astory with adifferent ending." 131

Owens-Adair quoteda writer named Charles Boston,

who, in an article titled "ProtestAgainst Sterilization,"

published in the Journalof Crime and Criminology,wrote that if a legislaturewere able to constitutionally sterilize

the criminal and the insane,it would soon do thesame to other classes of people. In reply, Owens-Adair wrote:

The fear of this cautiouslawyer is that the legislature might wishto expand and include still other classes insuch a statute. Is this risk not taken in all legislation? He also - finds fault with the law, because,forsooth, a man might be convicted ofrape by false testimony and emasculated! Do we not take this risk in all other law making--hanging,for instance?

Boston raised the objection thatsome state legislatures

did not consider the role of the environmentin causing

undesirable traits in offspring. Owens-Adair replied that although environmental effectsmay not be mentioned specifi-

cally in legislation, theyare implied. Further, she ad-

mitted that "all crime and defectare not hereditary. There

are, of course, spontaneous cases caused by brutalor vicious environment."But, she concluded, "Surelya legal mind comprehends that environmentcan never change the mental

capacities of a feeble-mindedperson or idiot. Their's is not a latent mentality butan absent mentality." 'S

Concluding her discussion of the legalityof sterilization, Owens-Adair emphasized thatall persons "whoare potential parents of degenerateor socially inadequate offspring" should be subject tosterilization laws, whether 132

or not those people are confined in state institutions. To relieve society of the "menace and burden of degeneracy"

she said the citizenry "must dependupon the general police power to regulate the individual to promote the general welfare of society." She continued that "For the betterment of the body social and for the tranquility of thecommunity we invade personal rights in a thousand ways. Surely it is within the police power of the state to regulate the lives of the irresponsible for the good of the whole." Owens-Adair ended her argument for sterilization legislation with a quote from Herbert Spencer: "To be a good animal is the first requisite to success in life, and to be a nation of good animals is the first condition to national prosperity."46

By 1917, Owens-Adairts arguments for eugenic sterilization legislation were successful. An act which became Chapter 279 of the 1917 General Laws of Oregon was passed by the state legislature. That act was designed To prevent the procreation of feeble minded, insane, epileptic, habitual criminals, moral degenerates and sexual perverts, who may be inmates of institutions maintained by public expense, by authorizing and providing for the sterilization of perso s with inferior hereditarypotentialities.L7 To carry out the provisions of this act, an Oregon State

Board of Eugenics was established. The purpose of sterilizations conducted under authority of this act was:

for the betterment of the physical, mental, neural, or psychic condition of the inmate, or to protect society from the menace of 133

procreation by said inmate, and not in any manner as a punitive measure; and no person shall be emasculated under the authority of this Act except that such operation shall be found to be necessary to improve the physical, mental, neural or psychic condition of the inmate .4

In 1919 the provisions of the 1917 act were modified to preclude the possibility of the legislation being class

action against Oregon's institutionalized citizens. A major change in the legislation expanded the number of individuals who might be sterilized from "male and female inmates of any of the institutions herein" in 1917, to "all

persons within the state of Oregon procreation by whom would produce children with an inherited tendency to feeblemindedness,

insanity, epilepsy, criminality or degeneracy." Both-'the

1917 and 1919 statutes were codified in the Oregon Laws of

1920.49With the successful passage and codification of her sterilization bill, Owens-Adair saw the fulfillment of more-than a decade of hard work anddetermination.50 The sterilization legislation Owens-Adair had sponsored was again modified in 1923 to provide appeal procedures against decisions made by the Board of Eugenics. The new legislation required the board to obtain a court order to enforce sterilizations if protests were filed against the board's recommendations. Between 1917 and 1923, the Board of Eugenics had examined 314 people and ordered 214 of them

sterilized.51 The law was once again amended in 1935 requiring that all people sterilized under provisions of 134 the act for reasons of sexual perversion be so recorded on official court record. Between the adoption of Owens-Adairfs statute in 1917 and May 1975,a total of 1,713 women and 935 men had been sterilized under the auspices of the Oregon State Board of Eugenics.52 In 1967,legislative revision changed the organization's name to the State Board of Social Protection, and altered its composition.A continuing problem with lack of funds and conflict between board policy and Oregon laws led to a disbanding of the board on Aug. 29, 1975. A communication on that date from board secretary Vesta Wiseman informed other members that the board would no longer hold hearings. She did remind board members that sterilization could be encouraged on a voluntary basis. That option was left open by the Attorney General's opinion number 6510 written in June 1968: the intent of the legislature (is) that sterilization is not against public policy and is entirely permissible provided that the provisions of the statute are complied with. The statutemakes no distinctionas tosex, age or the capacity of a person to give consent. Consequently, there appears tobe no reasonwhy a person who is mentally retarded or mentally ill could not request sterilization. Obviously,sincepersons of such mental capacity may or may not be of sufficient capacity to give an informed consent, any physician performing the operation should obtain the proper iormed consent from the guardian or parent.

In its 68 years of active operation the Oregon State Board of Social Protection, formed throughthe campaign efforts of Owens-Adair, sterilized a total of 2,648 men 135 and women in the name of eugenics. 136

Chapter V References

'KennethLudmerer, Genetics and the American Societ : A Historical Appraisal (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), p.66.

2lbid.,p.64. 3LewellysBarker, "Heredity in the Clinic," American Journal of the Medical Sciences, vol. 173 (1927)P-597, cited by Ludmerer, Genetics, p.64.

4SameulHolmes, "A German Text Translated," Journal of Heredity, vol.22 (1931) p.356, cited by Ludmerer, Genetics, p.65.

5Ludmerer,Genetics, p.66. 6LaurenceSnyder,"Problems Confronting Human Geneticists: Discussion," American Journal of Human Genetics, vol. 6 (1954) p.109,cited byLudmerer,Genetics, P-777. 7Ludmerer,Genetics, p.70. 81bid.,p.71. 91bid.,p.73. 10Bethenia AngelinaOwens-Adair,Human Sterilization: Its Social and Legislative Aspects (1922p.160. 11Ibid., p.177. 12Bethenia AngelinaOwens-Adair,The Eugenic Marriage Law: The Situation in Oregon (Salem, Or.: 1922,p. 9. 13Owens-Adair,Human Sterilization, p.13. 141bid. 15 For comparison of the Jukes and Kallikak family studies see Ludmerer, Genetics, p.35;also, Haller, Eugenics, chapters two and seven.

16Owens-Adair, Human Sterilization, p.139.

171bid.,P.142. 18Ibid.$ P.15. 191bid. 137 20Ibid., p.143. 21Ibid., P144. 22Ibid., p.57. 231bid., p.55.

241bid.,p.208. 251bid., p.249. 26 Ibid. 27Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair, The Eugenic Marriage Law: The Situation in Oregon (Salem, Or.:Owens-Adair, 1922), P.3. 28Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (New York: Brentano's Publishers, 1922), p.95. 29Ibid., p.96.

300wens-Adair,Human Sterilization, p.17. 311bid.,p.19.

32Ibid.,p.20. 331bid.

341bid.

351bid.,p.22

361bid.,p.28 371bid.

381bid. 391bid.

401bid.

41Ibid.,P-30- 42Ibid.

431bid.,p.31. 138

441bid.,p.32.

451bid.

46Ibid.,p.33.

47BenOlcott, ed., State of Oregon General Laws: Adoptedbythe Twenty-ninth Regular Session of the Legislative Assembly, Jan. 5- Feb.19,1917 (Salem, Or.: State Printing Department, 1917). p.518.

481bid.sP4519. 49Conrad Olson, ed., Oregon Laws, Volume II (San Fran- cisco: The Bancroft-Whitney Company, 1920), p.1.86.

50RodneyBanks, Owens-Adair's grandnephew, was a twelve- year-old page in the Oregon Senate when Owens-Adair introduced her first human sterilization bill. He remembers Owens-Adair as a very business-like woman with "flamboyant grey hair" and "nothing bashful about her." Banks said Owens-Adair was an excellent public speaker and argued on the senate floor very forcefully against considerable skepticism from the senators. His father, William Banks (child of Owens- Adair's sister), was an Oregon senator who,on occasion, spoke in the senate chambers in Owens-Adairts defense. But, Owens-Adair finally won the legislators' approval "more or less singlehandedly." Banks said of Owens-Adair, "once she had her mind made up, therewas no stopping her." Interview with Rodney Banks, Surf Pines, Oregon, 10 August 1977.

SlJackSmolensky, A History of Public Health in Oregon (Eugene: The University of Oregon, June1957). p.291. 52OregonState Board of Eugenics, Minutes, Vol. I, Jan. 28, 1921 -_Jan. 1, 1927 (Portland: Oregon State Department of Human Resources). 139 VI. CONCLUSION

The life of Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair was a microcosm of the major nineteenth century reform movements.

In logical sequence, she lent her support to suffrage, temperance, and eugenics, and crusaded along the way in favor of equal educational and career opportunities for women.. Her success, both in social reform and in her personal life,necessitated substantial path breaking of her own.

Parting from traditional female roles, Owens-Adair faced continual criticism. Her determination to succeed despite hardships characterized her life and distinguished her efforts in the suffrage and temperance campaigns. The tactics Owens-Adair used were not different than those employed by other campaigners: articles for the press, speeches, and personal appeals. But Owens-Adair was perhaps more effective than the typical reformer because of her easy command of the written word and well- honed oratorical style. Most important, she seemed to harbor no fears or reservations about making her beliefs known, with frequency and with vigor. In her suffrage work, Owens-Adair gained a conviction of the power of women as social reformers. In her temperance work, she urged those women to stop the flow 140 of bad heredity caused by abuse of alcohol by the nation's men and boys. As her medical work brought her into contact more and more with society's unfortunates, and as she read about heredity in the works of the nation's leading eugenists, it wasn't long before Owens-Adair was blaming all physical, mental, and social defects on the workings of bad heredity. Her knowledge of newly developed sterilization techniques made the solution to the problem of the degeneration of the human race all too obvious: stop the flow of bad heredity.

The experience gained in the suffrage and temperance campaigns turned out to be time well spent as Owens-Adair sought support for her eugenic legislation proposals. By this time she knew just how to turn a phrase to get wide coverage in the press. And, her fiery oratories convinced many in her listening audiences of the worth of her proposals. And, in the eugenic campaign, her determination was put to the test in repeated appeals to individual legislators and to gathered assemblies at the state capitol. Her determination and her persuasiveness were ultimately successful.

But, for all her success in achieving her campaign goals, her eugenic proposals were no better documented or justified than others of that time period. Although her medical education did set her apart from many eugenic reformers,Owens-Adair did not use that training to critically evaluate her proposals or those of other eugenists.That is not to say the illusion of science was not present in 141 her arguments. She often said that her proposals were dictated by the well-known principles of trait inheritance. Certainly the fact that she was a respected physician led her supporters to believe her proposed legislation was, in fact, justified by the latest scientific discoveries.

However, while claiming that heredity was solely responsible for feeblemindedness, imbecility, idocy, epilepsy, insanity, criminal tendencies and a wide variety of defects,

Owens-Adair never explained how heredity could cause such complex problems. The implication was that the experts-- the eugenists at Cold Spring Harbor--had already proven the influence of heredity beyond a doubt.in their wide- reaching genealogies. Owens-Adair probably believed the work of those eugenists to be of the highest scientific calibre; she praised the "thousands of scientific men and women in the field devoting their earnest and faithful lives to the great work of elevating and purifying the race." Although 'Owens-Adair no doubt believed her own eugenic proposals were firmly grounded in science, as developed by the national eugenists, she fits Ludmerer's characterization of physicians attracted to eugenicsas a social movement rather than a scientific reformprogram.Her eugenic proposals clearly reflected the ideas of the nation's leading eugenists, and, unfortunately, she simplyassumed those proposals were justified by the genetic knowledge 142

of the day. Had she herself been better grounded in the basics of genetics, perhaps she would have been more

critical in her evaluation of the nation's eugenic programs.

But as it was, in launching Oregon's eugenic campaign,

Owens-Adair promoted hereditarian explanations of the

transmission of human defects, reflecting arguments made

earlier by Charles Davenport and other nationally recognized eugenists. Uncritical acceptance of the menace of the feebleminded idea indicated a familiarity with Charles

Goddard's works. The sterilization legislation she first proposed closely resembled Harry Laughlin's model sterili-

zation law. Finally, the importance she placed on genealogies compiled at Cold Spring Harbor and her reluctance to discuss the workings of genetic inheritance indicated an ignorance or disregard for the mechanisms ofheredity. 143

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